


extremis malis, extrema remedia

by gammadolphin



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Assumed Character Death, Brief suicidal thoughts, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Recovery, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 10:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16239575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gammadolphin/pseuds/gammadolphin
Summary: When Bucky Barnes broke free of Hydra’s programming in 2013 and went on the run, he didn’t expect his life to go anywhere but downhill.When Sam Wilson went out one icy November night to make sure no homeless people were freezing in the streets, he didn’t expect to meet a hollow-eyed stranger who would change everything.They were both wrong.Six months later, Steve Rogers is in for the surprise of his life.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This one has been a real bitch to tag, so I guess you'll just have to take a chance on it ;)
> 
> I've been working on this fic for a while and it's pretty much finished, so updates should be relatively frequent.
> 
> Please heed the warnings in the tags. If you need me to clarify any of those warnings, just send me a message/comment.
> 
> Enjoy!

He awoke in flames.

This wasn’t unusual. His memories were little more than shadowy impressions, but he knew the sensation of being dragged from the icy numbness of cryostasis. His handlers never paid any mind to his comfort, to warming him gradually. 

So his first moments of awareness were consumed by familiar agony, the violent shock of blood flowing back to frozen flesh, of billions of dead neurons being forced back to life under an onslaught that was never meant to be survivable. He registered the pain tearing through every cell of his body, but it meant little to him. Pain was just another sensation, to be cataloged and filed away until it was useful.

But this time, there was an unusual quality to it. The thawing procedure was supposed to grow less painful as it progressed, but instead, the blazing pain only grew worse. It seemed to be clawing into his very bones now, deeper than flesh. It burned through his veins like acid, growing in intensity. 

He heard himself screaming, and he knew his handlers didn't like that, found the noise irritating, but he didn't bother stopping. He was already in more agony than his handlers had ever inflicted, pain so intense and consuming that he was unlikely to survive it anyway. It went beyond his body, clawing deeper into him, into his brain, scorching everything in its path. Burning away barriers that had been in place for a long, long time.

From behind those barriers came a sudden, unbearable flood of memories.

_He was on another table, in another life, strapped down and surrounded by uncaring faces, hidden from his accusing eyes with masks. They too were injecting him with poison, experimenting on his expendable body while he could do little but repeat his name, rank, and serial number as he tried not to break._

_He was lying in ice and blood, pain and cold and fear crashing over him in an overwhelming tide, crushing him down and holding him still even as new hands grabbed at him, stole him away to a fate worse than death._

_He was shaped and molded, broken down into dust before being reformed into an automaton, the image of the man he had once been, but nothing more._

_He was subjected to that frozen hell, over and over. Released only to venture forth into a different hell, one in which he was the demon, unerringly stalking his targets._

Fresh screams tore from him now as the fire reached ever deeper, scorching away decades’ worth of foreign invasions, parasites in his mind. It razed him to ash.

"Vitals are stabilizing."

"Get him ready for recalibration."

"I thought we said this would fix him."

"It doesn't matter. We need to get him prepped."

“Bosses are gonna want answers-“

The voices began to register as the fire receded. They were talking about the Winter Soldier, about the asset they had so painstakingly crafted.

But it was Bucky Barnes who opened his eyes.

*****

He didn't know where he was, didn't know why seventy years of programming had broken, why his handlers didn't seem to think anything was amiss. And he didn't know how to even begin handling what had happened to him, what had been _done_ to him. It was too big, too much.

So he didn't handle it. As tremors wracked his body and his breaths came in panting gasps, he boxed it all away again, behind barriers of his own making this time. They were much more fragile, and wouldn't last long, but they’d give him time to get the job done.

He was strapped down, as he always was when being brought out of stasis. The restraints weren't there to prevent his escape. His conditioning had been too strong, too thorough for that to be necessary. Their function was to keep him from thrashing around too much in the agony of his awakening.

But that conditioning was a thing of the past. His training wasn’t.

There were seven people in the room, a quick scan revealed. Four were soldiers, armed to the teeth and steely-eyed as they focused on him. Two were scientists, the people responsible for the Winter Soldier’s maintenance. The last one was a woman in a business suit, a tablet in hand and a frown on her face as she watched an array of monitors.

Not one of them was expecting the attack.

It was far from an even fight. Bucky didn’t give a shit.

He made them regret turning him into such a deadly weapon.

It was over quickly, but there was no pleasure in his victory. Bucky could feel his protective blanket of shock crumbling fast, and he still wasn't anywhere near safe yet. He'd taken care of the people in the room, but there was no way they hadn't sounded an alarm, and there would be reinforcements coming. 

Recapture was not an option.

So although he had a thousand and one questions, although his mind was reeling and his stomach churning and his hands itching to destroy every last person who had done this to him, he couldn't.

Live to fight another day, that was what he'd always told Steve when he tried to pull some idiot, self-sacrificing stunt.

_Steve._

Suppressing that thought more forcefully than any of the others, Bucky ran.

*****

They'd been keeping him in one of Hydra's more remote locations, a facility in Siberia. A stolen jet got him out of there, carried him over the vast wasteland of ice and snow that would have been certain death on foot. The plane was more advanced than anything Bucky had seen in the war, but the Winter Soldier was trained to pilot all manner of aircraft, and the skills remained. He set it to autopilot, and grabbed a toolkit from where it was stored with the rest of the jet’s emergency supplies.

He'd been trained to do field maintenance on his arm, in case anything ever malfunctioned when he was on assignment. His handlers erased the memory of where the trackers in it were located whenever he found them by mistake, but that knowledge was back now, along with far too much else. He used it to extract the three small devices, breathing just a little easier with each one he pitched out of the jet, with each moment that carried him further away from the Hydra facility.

But he knew he couldn’t stay airborne for long, not in a Hydra plane. That Hydra would continue searching for him was a given, as far as he was concerned. He didn’t intend to make it easy for them.

So he adjusted the autopilot, gathered up all of the emergency rations on the jet, and waited. The sun was starting to sink towards the horizon, and when he spotted it glinting off the surface of a lake, he made for the back of the jet, overrode the entry hatch controls, and jumped.

After several long seconds of plummeting through empty air, he felt the splintering crack of an ice crust giving way beneath his boots. There was no cold bite from the water that swallowed him though, no paralyzing shock. Clutching his pack close, he swam for the surface, and then made his laborious way to shore.

From there, he started running. He wondered if he’d ever feel like he could stop.

*****

It was only when Bucky was physically incapable of going on that he started to look for other options. 

The sun had risen and set on another day by the time he broke into the shallow, unfinished basement of a house isolated in a copse of trees. He moved as silently as he always had as the Winter Soldier, and there was no sound from above as he curled up close to the hot water tank. If Hydra was using heat-seeking technology to track him, it would hopefully be enough to mask his signature. And if not...well, exhausted as he was, he still wouldn't turn down the opportunity to fight a few more of the bastards who'd done this to him.

But as he lay there, finally giving his spent body the chance to rest, he found it that much harder to run from the mess in his head.

Everything was there, all of it. Every moment he'd spent in captivity, every hand that had touched him, every life he'd snuffed out. Every violation committed against him, by him. Everything he'd been before. Everything he'd _had_ before. Everything that was now surely nothing but memories and dust.

It was still too much to process. So he didn't, just curled up on the grimy concrete floor and let it all crash over him again, sharper and more painful than it had been in that Hydra lab. A punishing maelstrom of screams and blood, violence and loss, and the devastating, overwhelming knowledge that he hadn’t been strong enough to stop any of it. He shook with it, gasping for each breath, wondering if the tide would ever cease.

Some small part of him said he should be - well, if not happy, then at least relieved. He was no longer a prisoner, no longer anyone's pet assassin.

He was free.

Only he wasn't, not really. Because whatever tattered remains of his soul he'd regained today had become a new prison, one that was painful in a way no Hydra torture had ever been. He was trapped by the knowledge of what he'd done, what he'd lost, and that was something he could never escape.

*****

Bucky hadn't thought sleep possible, but he must have drifted off at some point during the interminable night, because he was jolted awake by the sound of an engine rumbling to life overhead.

Immediately on high alert, he leapt to his feet, already assessing for threats. It took him a flash of a second to remember where he was and why, by which time he'd already determined that he was still alone in the basement, as safe as he could be in his current state.

Once he'd processed all that though, he remained standing there, stock still. Aimless.

_What now?_

His body told him he was hungry, thirsty, that he had basic needs to take care of. That would be something to do at least, something simple.

But what was the point? What was he supposed to do now? What was he; what did he have left?

He had no answers to those questions. He was no longer a tool for evil, but he wasn’t so arrogant or stupid as to think he could defeat his former captors on his own. And he’d picked up enough to understand that Hydra was everywhere. Going to the police, to the FBI, to SHIELD, it would all amount to turning himself back over to them.

He would die before he let that happen. It was the only thing he was sure of just then.

But that left little else. With the authorities not an option and everyone he knew from his former life dead or with both feet in the grave...he was alone. Utterly, comprehensively, _guttingly_ alone.

He stood there for a long time, thinking through everything in a detached, clinical state. He served no purpose anymore, and he certainly had nothing to live for, so the logical question was...why keep on living?

It wouldn't be difficult to end his own life. He could protect himself with unparalleled skill, had been programmed to, but he knew his own vital weaknesses. He could put an end to all of this today, now, here in this basement. He could just...stop. Stop the agony of his newly recovered memories. Stop the fierce, inexorable ache of loss in his chest. Stop thinking, stop feeling, stop _hurting_.

He'd tried it before. Back in the earlier days of his captivity, during his conditioning process, after he'd realized they were going to break him but before they'd managed to completely strip away his soul. He'd tried to fight back in the only way left to him, to take himself out of their arsenal.

They'd stopped him, of course. Stripped away that final bit of his agency.

Bucky shuddered at the memory. He had it back; that choice.

It would be easy.

But when he moved at last, it wasn't to snap his own neck, or to find a sharp knife or the nearest gun. It was to the kitchen, where he began to gulp down water from the faucet, where he poured small amounts of five different kinds of cereal into the same bowl and began to eat it dry.

This was a choice too. Living, remaining. It was his choice.

And maybe he'd change his mind. Maybe after another few days of his victims' screams replaying in his head, after a week of remembering that Steve was gone, after a month of still having no purpose, no reason, he'd decide to take that out.

But for now...well, he was a survivor. He always had been. And he had a feeling that even in a few days, weeks, months, he'd be too angry to die.

*****

He spent the next few hours in the house. He knew it wasn't a good idea to linger, but nor was it wise to cast himself out into the world with no idea of where or when he was. And he’d had decent computer skills since two missions ago, although there was a good chance they were at least somewhat outdated now.

Having something to do, even if it was something as mundane as figuring out the basic facts of his surroundings, was more helpful than he could have realized. It gave him something to focus on, something to distract him from the chaos in his head.

A quick look at the space-themed calendar on the wall told him it was October of 2013. Nearly seventy years since Bucky Barnes had fallen to his death. Five years since the Winter Soldier had last been activated.

Hoping computers hadn't changed too much since his last training update, Bucky went in search of one he could use. He managed to gain access to the desktop computer he found in an office off the living room. It wasn't even protected by a password, and Bucky found himself scolding the carelessness of its owners even as he used it to pull up an internet browser.

But once he had, his fingers, flesh and metal alike, froze over the keyboard.

What did he even want to know? What out there could possibly help him figure out his place in this new world?

As he sat there staring at the screen, something in the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was the logo embossed on the frame of the monitor in shining silver letters.

_Stark Industries._

As Bucky stared at the words, a few particular memories began to jump out from the rest. Cracking jokes with Howard Stark as they watched Steve testing out his new uniform. Listening as Howard explained how to use the new smoke grenades he'd designed for the Howlies. Choking the life out of Howard while his dying wife cried out beside him.

Bucky didn't remember pushing the chair away from the computer, didn't remember stumbling to his feet, but suddenly he was hunched over the kitchen sink, retching up the food he'd just eaten.

He stayed there for a long time, even after his stomach was empty, even after his human hand had stopped shaking, even after the onslaught of memories had faded into something manageable.

He just stood there and breathed. Tried to come to terms with the fact that this was his new reality.

When that proved an insurmountable task, he gave up and returned to the computer. At least now, he had something to look for.

He knew from his mission briefing in 1991 that Howard had a son. Anthony Edward Stark, preferred name Tony. He was as good a place to start as any.

There turned out to be far too much information about Tony Stark out there to sort through. But he was alive, and apparently quite successful both as the owner of one of the richest companies in the world and as something called an Iron Man.

Bucky wasn't quite sure what he'd been hoping to find. Did it help to know that Howard's son had survived and thrived? Did it absolve any of the guilt weighing on Bucky's soul?

Not at all.

He was about to end the search when something familiar caught his eye. It was part of Tony Stark's profile, listed under known affiliations.

_Member: Avengers (led by Captain America)_

Bucky's world seemed to shrink down to nothing but those few words on the screen.

_Led by Captain America._

A sharp cracking noise made Bucky flinch. He looked down, and realized he'd gripped the edge of the desk hard enough in his metal hand to splinter the wood. He knew he should feel bad about that, or worried about leaving such a noticeable trace of his presence here, but all that was eclipsed by rage and grief.

How dare they.

How _dare_ they give Steve's title to someone else? How dare they entrust that mantle to a stranger? Who the hell did they think they were, touching his legacy like that? Had Steve himself really meant so little to them? Did they think they could just stick some other guy in a star-spangled suit and carry on like losing Steve meant nothing?

Sick and furious, Bucky pushed himself away from the desk again and began to pace the small room like a caged wolf.

Steve was dead. There was no escaping that, not now that Bucky had his memories back. He knew because they'd told him, because they'd _showed_ him. His tormentors, the people tasked with breaking and programming him had reveled in imparting the information. They'd shown him the newspaper clippings, played all the news reels; an endless, agonizing barrage of sights and sounds and words that all came together to mean that the person Bucky cared about more than anyone else in the world was dead, was never coming back for him.

It wasn't until he tasted salt on his lips that Bucky realized he'd started to cry. He wiped the tears away with a startled hand. The Winter Soldier had never cried. Not from grief, not from pain. There was no point to it.

Just as there was no point to it now. All the tears in the world wouldn't bring Steve back.

So he forced them to stop falling, and he tucked his useless grief back behind those flimsy walls, and he returned to the computer to continue planning his survival.


	2. In from the Cold

It was the first night of the year the temperature was expected to dip below freezing. Not just that, but a thick blanket of snow was expected, blown into DC by a rapid shift in temperature.

Sam walked the streets slowly, cold hands shoved deep in his pockets. His breath fogged in front of him, but he ignored it as he made his careful rounds.

He knew many of the faces that could usually be spotted around here. He'd gotten most of them into the habit of seeking shelters at times like these, and he was gratified when his search of the regular places came up empty. He knew there were those he couldn't see, couldn't reach, but this small victory still meant something.

He’d just finished a cursory sweep of an alley and was about to move on, when his hard-earned instincts alerted him to the fact that he wasn't alone. He went still, trying to get a sense of where his company was without making any sudden movements. People in situations like this didn't always respond well to strangers, and he didn't want to appear threatening.

When he didn't hear so much as a rustle of movement though, he looked around. Still no sign of life, but he did notice an arrangement of cardboard and discarded metal siding that didn't look accidental.

"Hello?"

After a pause that yielded no response, Sam took a few steps closer to the makeshift shelter. Hands held up in a gesture of peace, he crouched down to try to get a look through the entrance.

"Anybody home?" he asked.

Still no response, but he could see the human-shaped shadow inside. A man, if the width of the shoulders and cut of the jaw were anything to go by, but it was hard to tell in the darkness.

"What do you want?"

Something about the voice was jarring. It was low, but raspy and almost broken, as if it hadn't been used in a couple decades. And something lurked in it that gave Sam chills. 

But he'd never been one to scare easy.

"Hey there," he said. "My name's Sam. It's gonna get cold tonight, and I wanted to make sure you were all right."

Another pause, a shifting of the shadows within the shelter.

"Why?"

It always hurt when people asked Sam that.

"Because no one deserves to freeze to death out here," he said.

The silence this time stretched on for almost half a minute. Then,

"You're wrong."

And then the shadows were moving again, and a figure was crawling towards the entrance of the shelter. Sam shuffled back a step so as not to crowd him as he emerged.

The man looked far younger than Sam had expected, maybe late thirties. His dark hair was long and dirty, hanging in a limp curtain around his unshaven face. His eyes were the blue-grey of icy steel, and something about them seemed to cut deep into Sam. He knew in an instant that those eyes had seen far too much.

"When did you get back?" he asked. The man stared at him.

"What?"

Sam offered him a wry smile.

"I know another vet when I see one. There's a lot of us out here, you know. Way more than there should be. You're not alone, man."

The sound that escaped the man was a rusty, humorless parody of a laugh.

"No one's been through what I have."

Raising an eyebrow, Sam shrugged.

"'course they haven't," he said. "No one's path is the same. Doesn't mean it has to stay solitary."

The man still didn't respond. He didn't seem afraid though, or confused. Sam had been doing this long enough to recognize someone who was just _lost_.

"So, when'd you get back?" he asked again, because it usually helped to know how long someone had been carrying their demons.

"Not sure I ever did."

"I know the feeling." Slowly, carefully, Sam extended a hand. "My name's Sam."

The man looked at it for so long that Sam almost gave up, but then a pale hand emerged from the depths of an oversized jacket to grasp his. Despite the chill of the night, his grip was warm.

"Bucky."

Sam shook Bucky's hand, still surveying him.

"It's gonna be a rough night, Bucky. Have you ever been to one of the shelters around here?"

A short shake of the head.

"I'll be fine."

"Then you must be Superman, because humans sure aren't built for this shit."

Bucky snorted. Again, there was no humor in the sound.

"I was."

Sam rolled his eyes.

"Then I'm honored to meet the next Avenger, tough guy. But see, I've got a nervous disposition. And if I leave you here and think your ass is gonna turn into a popsicle overnight, I'm not gonna be able to sleep."

A wrinkled formed in Bucky's brow as he frowned at Sam.

"Why the hell does this matter to you?" he asked without ire, seeming genuinely baffled. "I'm no one."

"No, you're a melodramatic dude with a funny name who went out there and put his life on the line for his country. And I'd rather not lose sleep over you. So how about you do me a solid and get out of the cold tonight?"

"Are you gonna sit there and keep lecturing me until I do?"

"Are you gonna test it and find out?"

They stared at each other for another minute, long enough for Sam to fear that the answer to his question was a resounding yes. It wasn't as if he was going to physically drag Bucky off the streets. But although he'd been joking about the lack of sleep, it still wouldn't sit right with him to leave this man alone. Not when he didn't seem to give a damn about what happened to him.

"Fine."

Sam blinked, and then stared as Bucky crawled the rest of the way out of his shelter and rose to his feet.

"Yeah?" he asked, hurrying to stand as well, trying to hide his surprise.

The question earned him a careless shrug. 

"If it'll get you to quit nattering at me."

Sam grinned, wide and deliberately obnoxious.

"I guess we'll see."

*****

Bucky didn't know what the hell this Sam guy's game was. 

The possibility that Sam was a Hydra agent had crossed his mind, of course. The level of interest he'd displayed in Bucky's status was inexplicable, and could have been an elaborate ploy to get him out in the open. But this seemed a minimal danger. If Hydra knew where Bucky was, they wouldn't send one snarky guy in a parka after him, they'd send a small army.

He still wasn't quite sure where that left Sam though. Especially when the guy insisted on walking him to the nearest shelter himself.

"Why do I get the feeling you don't trust me?" Bucky asked as they walked.

"Because I found you planning on trying to ride out the coldest night of the year so far with nothing but your pride to keep you warm."

Yeah, his pride and whatever the hell had been pumped into his veins over the years. Bucky hadn't been lying about having no worries regarding the upcoming cold. He hadn't felt cold since coming out of cryofreeze for the last time.

He saw no need to keep resisting Sam though. He didn't give a damn where he slept, and staying on the streets reduced the amount of cash he needed to spend, the number of people he interacted with. There were the other homeless, of course, but they tended to leave him alone when he wanted.

Not Sam, though. The annoying bastard was nothing if not persistent, it seemed.

When they got to the shelter, it became clear that Sam was a familiar face there. He received warm greetings from staff and occupants alike, many of whom he seemed to know by name. He introduced Bucky to a woman named Lavonda, who was keeping an eye on things for the night.

"I know where to find you if you try to pull a runner on her," Sam warned Bucky as he said his goodbyes. "So just save us both the trouble and keep your frosty ass parked here for the night, all right?"

Even if it was in jest, the threat of being followed, hunted down if he misbehaved, should have chilled Bucky, should have sent his instincts into defense mode and driven him from the building, from the damn _city_. But there was something genuine about Sam, something that didn't lend itself well to suspicions or fears.

And to some extent, it just didn't matter. Bucky may have decided not to kill himself, but that conviction didn't extend far enough to make him care whether he lived or died. If Sam did end up being a threat, then Bucky would either kill him or be killed by him. Simple as that, and not worth worrying about.

So he just flipped Sam off, which earned him a disapproving look from Lavonda, and watched the other man retreat from the shelter with a unbothered wave of farewell. 

Whatever issues Lavonda may have had with Bucky's choice of nonverbal communication tactics, she spoke to him kindly, explained the shelter's rules while she showed him inside.

It was a single room, a simple rectangle filled with three long rows of bunk beds. Many of them were already full, no doubt in anticipation of the upcoming harsh weather. Bucky picked one against the wall by the door, and clambered up to the top bunk, even though it would slow his response time fractionally if he had to make a quick exit. The mattress was thin, little more than a couple of foam pads encased in durable plastic, but the sheets were clean, and the air was warm.

"Here." Lavonda had followed Bucky, and now she held up a folded blanket to him, which he reached out automatically to accept. "A group of local middle schoolers made a bunch of these as a class project. We’ve yet to get any complaints."

With one last smile, she left, and Bucky peered down at the blanket. It was a patchwork of different colors and yarns, sewn together with clumsy loops of blue cotton. It had clearly been made by a group of people, some of who didn't seem to know their way around a pair of knitting needles all too well.

Bucky ran his right hand over it, wondering if those kids had imagined they could be creating something to keep a murderer warm at night. Sick at the thought, he left it folded at the foot of his bed.

It wasn't too late yet, barely eight PM. Some people had already returned to their bunks, but none of them were attempting to sleep. Some were talking to each other, some were reading battered paperbacks, others were eating meager dinners of fast food or granola bars. Bucky had nothing to read or eat though, and he certainly wasn't going to talk to anyone. These people were facing enough hardship as it was; they didn't need to be exposed to him.

So for lack of anything better to do, he curled up on his bed, back to the wall, and closed his eyes. He stayed like that for a long time, listening to the sounds of the room continuing to fill around him, people finally starting to settle in to rest.

It was the first night he'd spent inside since passing out in that basement in Siberia weeks ago. It was punctuated by the sound of three dozen heartbeats, three dozen people shifting and groaning in their sleep. Maybe it should have kept him awake, but the effect turned out to be somewhat soothing. It kept the silence at bay

He didn't sleep peacefully, by any means. But he slept.

*****

The dividing line between sleep and waking was razor thin for Bucky, and could be crossed at the slightest notice. He never really stopped being aware of his surroundings, and this morning, that meant keeping track of the different voices and footfalls in the room, cataloging and tracking each potential threat, even as some part of his brain was shut down in a desperate attempt to rest. He did this automatically, not really expecting any irregularities or points of concern.

Bucky wasn't used to hearing familiar voices, not anymore. In his current world, familiar meant enemy, with very few exceptions.

Evidently Sam had become one of those exceptions.

"Well, I'll be damned. You're still here." Bucky opened his eyes to see the man who'd brought him here standing beside his bed. "Morning, sunshine."

Being on the top bunk put him at Sam's eye level, and he scowled into the bright grin being leveled at him.

"If it's sunny out there, I'll eat my socks," he grumbled. "And I've been wearing them for weeks."

"Now, that's something I'd like to see."

As the rest of Bucky's brain came back online and he remembered the details of his situation, his mood darkened. He sat up, swinging his feet over the side of the bed. If Sam noticed that he'd slept with his boots on, he didn't say anything. He just sidestepped so Bucky could drop to the floor without a sound.

"You stalking me?" Bucky asked him.

"Like I don't have better things to do with my time than follow you around," Sam snorted. But then he let the joking attitude drop a little. "I actually came to pick up a couple people for one of the groups I run, down at the VA. Thought you might like to come along."

Bucky blinked at him.

"What?"

"It's for vets, like us. Gives us a chance to talk to people who understand."

It was some kind of therapy, then. Just the idea made Bucky let out a harsh snort.

"I hope like hell none of you can understand what's going on up here," he said, tapping a finger to his temple.

"This again, huh?" Sam rolled his eyes. "Look, I get it, Mr. Dark and Brooding. You've been through some shit. I don't doubt that. But guess what? We all have. So unless you're ready to sit there and tell me to my face that you wouldn’t get anything out of being around people to empathize with, then I dare you to tell me you’ve got better plans.”

When Bucky still didn't answer, Sam crossed his arms over his chest.

"We also have bagels and coffee, and you don't seem like you're in a position to turn your nose up at free food."

He had Bucky there. His enhanced body required an inconvenient number of calories to sustain itself, and he hadn't really been getting enough over the last few weeks. And in the end, what the hell difference did it make? If it would make this guy feel better, what did it matter to Bucky where he whiled away the hours?

So when two men and a woman accompanied Sam out of the shelter, Bucky followed them. They gave him warm smiles and let him ride shotgun in Sam’s car, didn't press him for information or chatter at him when he stayed silent. 

There was something almost peaceful about it, comforting. He'd forgotten what it was like to be around people who didn't have an agenda for him, who saw him as a person rather than a tool. And maybe these people were wrong about that, but Bucky found he didn't want to stop pretending, at least for a little while.

*****

Sam half expected Bucky to bolt once all the bagels were gone. He'd tucked himself into a corner with a plate, and was eating like someone who hadn't had a steady source of food for a while. But when people had stopped filing in and greeting each other, and Sam cleared his throat to get everyone into chairs and shutting up, Bucky grabbed another bagel before settling into a chair of his own. He picked one with empty seats on either side of it, but still, it was something.

Throughout the hour-long session, Bucky didn’t make a sound, barely even shifted in his seat. He did seem to be listening though, focusing with almost disconcerting intensity on whoever was talking at any given time. The other vets didn't mind his silence. They had their own stories to tell, and most of them appreciated an audience that actually listened.

When the group ended, Bucky was the first to vacate his seat and head for the door. 

Sam felt a pang of disappointment as he watched him leave, but his instincts told him it had been a big deal that Bucky stayed at all. All Sam could do now was hope that listening had helped, even in some small way.

That was one of the hardest parts of his chosen line of work, always had been. Seeing so many people hurting, drifting, and knowing he couldn't help all of them was something that weighed heavily on him.

He hoped Bucky wasn't going to become another one of his failures.


	3. Shared Haunts

Sam ran groups twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Some people attended almost all of them, some people only ever attended one, but usually it was somewhere in between. People came when they needed it, or when they could, knowing there would be no pressure or judgment from their fellow veterans.

Three more of those groups came and went before Bucky showed up again. Sam was a little surprised to see him, but relieved too. Bucky had seemed like one of those people who'd lived through a few too many hardships, and had just given up. Sam had seen his fair share of people like that before, and it wasn't often he saw them again.

But he didn't draw attention to Bucky, didn't make a big deal of his arrival. He just gave the man a nod, and considered it a victory when he nodded back. He'd washed his hair, at least, and now wore half of it up in a small bun, the rest hanging loose to brush his shoulders. It made Sam realize just how young he really looked, mid-thirties at most. But his eyes were unchanged, fathomless and piercing and far too heavy.

Bucky didn't say anything this time either, but that was all right. He listened, and he watched, and he didn't leave quite so quickly as he had on the first day.

At his third meeting, Bucky stayed late to help stack chairs and clean up the refreshment table. The hunch of his shoulders, the tightness in his jaw, told Sam he still wasn’t ready to talk about anything serious. But he was there. And when Sam thanked him for his help, he actually cracked a smile.

“Not used to it, are you?” he asked. At Sam’s frown of confusion, he elaborated. “Having someone help you, instead of the other way around.”

Sam rolled his eyes and waved off the comment. Still, he felt his face heat a little. It was true, he spent most of his life going out of his way to be there for people. And while he had people he could rely on if he needed them, friends and family, it wasn’t in his nature to ask for the kind of help he gave so readily.

He was surprised Bucky had figured that out about him already. It wasn’t often that the people in his groups bothered to consider him as closely as he did them. It wasn’t their fault; they were there because they had their own shit to work through.

“Probably about as used to it as you are to haircuts,” Sam said, earning himself another smirk from Bucky. 

It faded quickly, and it wasn't long before Bucky was headed for the door again, but it gave Sam hope.

*****

It was at Bucky's fourth meeting that he finally spoke to the group. 

Sophie Oslow, a Navy veteran, had just finished talking about the life she'd been forced to take, the personal toll it had been exacting from her ever since. The silence that followed was thick and solemn, and it was Bucky who broke it.

"I've killed a lot of people." He didn't look at anyone as he spoke, but his voice was steady. No one flinched at the words. "I didn't like it, but for a while, I knew why I was doing it.”

His gaze went distant. Something in it made the breath catch in Sam’s chest, a familiar ache of loss squeezing his heart.

“I was fighting for someone. As long as that was true, I could handle it."

Bucky let out a harsh huff of air. The entire room was focused on him, but he didn’t seem to notice anyone else.

"It was honestly a bit of a relief, to feel like I was _doing_ something. I knew who the bad guys were, and I was good at killing them. Really good."

He fell silent for a long moment, but no one interrupted. They could all sense how important this was, how badly he needed to share whatever he'd been carrying.

"I was proud of that. Not- not of being good at killing, but…glad that it meant I could still be useful when the person I was fighting for stopped needing me. Glad it was me, and not him, or anyone else. I didn't mind dying for that."

His left hand curled into a fist. He was wearing a glove on it, like he’d been every time Sam saw him.

"But I didn't die. I should have, but I didn't. And even though I- I lost everything I was fighting for, I still kept fighting. I didn't have a choice. Or maybe I did, I don't know. Maybe if I'd been stronger, or smarter, like-" He broke off, blew out a breath. He lifted his gaze to Lieutenant Oslow. "It takes something from you, the killing. If you ever get it back, let me know how."

She gave him a compassionate look, a wordless nod. Her eyes were bright with pained emotion, but she seemed grateful to have heard another perspective. Often, that was what the people who came to these meetings needed the most: to be reminded that they were not alone in their experiences.

Bucky didn't speak throughout the rest of the session. Still, Sam found his gaze drifting to him, contemplating what he'd said. The way he'd said it.

Sam had gotten pretty good at this, over the past few years. He’d heard a lot of stories. Not a one of them was the same as another, but he’d gotten to the point where very little could surprise him.

Something told him Bucky’s story, his whole story, would be an exception.

A few more people shared their experiences, found an understanding audience in one another. And after things had wound down and people started to leave, Bucky once again remained to help stack chairs and tidy up the room. He said nothing as they worked, and Sam didn’t try to push the breakthrough from the session.

But when they were finished, he raised a hand to waylay Bucky before he could duck out.

"I had a late night, and I was gonna go grab a cup of coffee," he said. "Could use some company."

"Christ, you must be pretty lonely if I'm the best you can do," Bucky replied, and Sam snorted.

"Oh, I could do better, believe me. I'm just lazy, and you're right here."

He waited, and Bucky was silent for so long that Sam started to lose hope. But then, like that cold November night a few weeks ago, Bucky acquiesced with a careless shrug.

"Fine," was all he said.

"Roll back the excitement there, man; I might get cocky."

Bucky didn't smile, but his perpetual scowl eased a little.

They walked together to the cheap, lesser-known coffee shop Sam liked to frequent. Bucky seemed a little thrown by the extent of the menu, and even as the line moved past him, he just stood there and stared at the plethora of options chalked on the massive board that stretched over the back wall.

"How can people do this many things to coffee?" he asked, sounding both disgruntled and a little impressed.

Sam raised a curious eyebrow at him.

"I don't know, I guess the invention of flavored syrups really changed the game. This isn't even that bad. Have you seriously never been to a Starbucks?"

"I've seen signs for them. I assumed it was a bank chain."

Despite his best effort, Sam couldn't avoid staring in shock. Where had this guy been living, under a rock?

"Might as well be," he said, shaking off his surprise. "They certainly make enough money."

Bucky frowned and returned his gaze to the board.

"Do they just have plain coffee?"

"Well, yeah, but you've gotta expand your horizons a little. If you've seriously never tried any of this stuff, I'd say it's time."

Sam had seen the way Bucky could eat. For all he looked tough as nails, he had a sweet tooth. Just this morning, he'd put away three danish and a cinnamon bagel slathered with honey pecan cream cheese. So he recommended the hazelnut coffee that was a personal favorite of his, along with extra cream. Bucky looked more than a little dubious, but he didn't argue.

He also paid for it with a couple of dirty and wrinkled bills before Sam could even offer to cover both of their cups. Sam didn't argue, even though he could spare the money far more easily than Bucky. He knew how important a feeling of independence could be, especially when wrestling with the survivor's guilt that clearly weighed heavy on Bucky's shoulders.

They said nothing to each other as they waited for their orders, but it wasn't an uncomfortable silence. Sam got the feeling that Bucky wasn't used to talking much, which was fine with him. For all that he loved working with people, Sam was an introvert at heart, and he appreciated silence.

But then their coffee was ready, and they were sitting down at the table Bucky picked out. Sam didn't miss the fact that it was one where Bucky could sit with his back to the wall and still have a clear view of the door and the other customers, but he made no comment. Instead, he watched in anticipation as Bucky took the first sip of his coffee.

"What do you think?" he asked. Bucky wrinkled his nose and thought about it.

"It doesn't taste like coffee."

"Yeah, but it's good, right?"

Apparently reluctant to agree with Sam, Bucky said nothing. But he did take another sip, and a little of the tightness that always creased his expression relaxed a bit. Sam would count it as a win.

They drank in silence for a while.

Sam had been doing this long enough to know that every person was different. Sometimes, people opened up on their own, but shut down when they were pressed. Other times, those who needed more than anything to talk wouldn't say a word if someone didn't coax it out of them. Sam had been trying to figure out where Bucky fell on that spectrum. It seemed like the time to make an educated guess.

"You were special forces, right?"

Bucky gave him a sharp look.

"What makes you say that?"

Sam shrugged.

"Been doing this a while. You get to recognize the signs."

After another moment of scrutiny, Bucky shrugged and sat back in his chair.

"Yeah, I guess you could call it special forces. There was no other unit like ours."

"Spend much time overseas?"

"Before? Around two years. After..." He shrugged again, his expression darkening. "No idea, really. At least a few years probably, all told."

Sam wasn't sure what that meant, but he thought back to what Bucky had said during their group session. The way he'd talked about losing what he was fighting for. But Sam got the feeling he wouldn't appreciate being pressed on the subject.

"You think it's gonna be exciting," he remarked, wrapping his hands around his disposable cup. "Joining up, going overseas, fighting for your country. But then you get over there, and it's just people killing each other. And you don't think about the big things you're supposedly fighting for, the ideals or whatever you swore to uphold. You're just trying to keep the guy next to you alive."

He swallowed and looked down.

"And when you can't, it's damn hard to remember what you're doing there."

Falling silent, he took another sip of coffee as he waited.

"You lost someone."

Sam nodded. He hadn't talked about it in the groups Bucky had attended. He'd always preferred to let the other vets share their stories, and restricted his contributions to empathy and advice. But he didn't think Bucky needed either of those things just then.

"My best friend. Riley. We joined up together, trained together. Fought together. And then he got blown out of the sky, and I couldn't do anything but watch."

Bucky didn't say he was sorry, or offer up any of the meaningless platitudes that people sometimes did when Sam told them the same story. He probably knew how useless they were.

"So you quit," he said instead. There was no accusation or disapproval in his tone.

"I found a different battlefield. That's all this is, man. You told me the night we met that you didn't feel like you'd gotten back yet. That's one of the hardest things to accept. You feel like the fighting should be over when your boots hit American soil. But that's not how it works."

"So I'm discovering." Bucky looked more weary than bitter.

Neither of them said anything for a while. They both continued to sip their coffee, and watch the comings and goings of other customers. Bucky never seemed to relax fully, as if he was doing a complete threat assessment on each new person who walked through the door. No wonder he always seemed so exhausted, if he was this on edge at all times.

But Sam didn't comment. He knew how hard it could be to leave war behind, to make that transition into every day not being a battle for survival.

"Your friend. Riley."

Sam looked up, but Bucky seemed to be struggling with his words, unsure what to say next.

"You miss him."

Sam blinked. For some reason, the comment threw him off.

"Every day."

Another pause, as the two men got lost in separate sets of memories. Then,

"Tell me about him?"

So Sam did.

*****

After that, Sam and Bucky started going out for coffee after group sessions at least once a week. They didn't always talk much, especially Bucky, but they quickly grew comfortable with one another's presence. Bucky turned out to have a snarky asshole hiding underneath his layers of angst, and it brought out matching levels of sass in Sam. When they weren't sharing their personal experiences, they were ribbing each other, or participating in stupid rounds of one-upmanship that usually ended with them throwing things at each other. 

Sam didn't know how Bucky spent the rest of his days, or where he spent his nights, and he didn't ask. He got the sense that Bucky knew full well how to take care of himself, when he had the motivation. It was this second point that Sam sometimes doubted, but as time went on, he began to see more signs of life in Bucky. 

The first time Sam invited Bucky to the gym, he seemed surprised. For all that he seemed more fit than a lot of people Sam had seen on active duty, he apparently hadn't been working out much. But he agreed just to stop Sam from pestering him.

It soon became evident that Sam needn't have bothered. 

They went to the weights section first, and Sam damn near called in reinforcements when he saw how much weight Bucky was planning on pressing. But the cocky little shit did fifty reps without breaking a sweat, holding direct eye contact with Sam the entire time.

It was an unmistakable challenge, but Sam wasn't suicidal. He removed sixty pounds from each side of the bar before even attempting to lift it, and even then, Bucky had to take it from him after only eleven reps.

"Okay, well at least now I feel justified in hating you," Sam panted, doubling over as he tried to suck enough oxygen into his protesting lungs. "Dude, what the hell?"

Bucky looked torn between being amused and cagey. Eventually, he just shrugged, lips twitching.

"Jealousy's not a good look on you, Wilson."

"Yeah, and smug makes you look like an asshole, so I guess neither of us is having a good day."

Bucky actually laughed then. The sound startled Sam as much as it had the first time he'd heard it. It sounded as rusty as it always did, but it still made him fight a smile. When they'd first met, he wouldn't have thought Bucky capable of laughter. Not with those eyes.

Grumbling to hide his satisfaction, Sam held up a hand. Bucky took it and hauled him to his feet. It was the left one, and Sam knew at once that something was off. The hand had no give to it, its surface hard and cool even through the leather of his glove.

He felt Bucky's eyes on him, so he was careful not to react. He just reached for his water bottle and began to gulp down the lukewarm liquid. But after watching him for a few more moments, Bucky grasped the fingers of his glove, and peeled it off.

Despite the effort he’d put into controlling his reaction, Sam nearly choked on his water.

Working with vets every day meant he'd seen plenty of prosthetics before, far more than an average member of the population. But he'd never seen one like this. It was solid, shining metal, its intricate plates interlocking in a near-perfect facsimile of a human hand. If Sam hadn't known from observation that it was entirely functional, he wouldn't have believed it.

"Where'd you score that?" he asked. "Is it Stark tech?"

For some reason, the question made Bucky's expression twist.

"Not hardly," he said. He shoved his hand back into the glove. "Which I guess is a good thing, because it looks like Stark is gonna be dead by Christmas."

It was Sam's turn to make a face. He'd managed to coax Bucky out for a beer, and they’d been sitting together at the bar when the news broke about Tony Stark threatening the Mandarin guy who'd been blowing people up all over the world. Every TV in the bar had been playing coverage of it on a loop. It was only a matter of time before the whole thing blew up in Stark’s face.

Thankfully, looking after dumbass superheroes wasn’t Sam’s problem.

"Well, I guess I know where I'm going the next time I need a jar of pickles opened."

Bucky's nose wrinkled.

"I don't like pickles."

"Even better."

*****

It was only through monumental force of will that Sam stopped himself from hurling his phone across his darkened bedroom when it yanked him from sleep at three o’clock in the morning. Grumbling like Gollum, he squinted at a screen that seemed brighter than the noonday sun.

He didn’t recognize the number, but he accepted the call.

“You had better not be a telemarketer.”

“This is Officer Michaels calling from the Metropolitan PD for Sam Wilson."

Sam's mouth went dry. Rarely did cops call with good news, especially in the middle of the night.

"Speaking," he managed to say.

"Mr. Wilson, do you know a man named James Grant?"

Blinking, Sam racked his brain for a second, before answering, "I don't think so."

"You sure? We've got a grifter here, picked him up for assaulting an officer. When we asked him if there was anyone we could call for him, he gave us your number."

Now, Sam sighed. He gave this number out at his sessions sometimes, to the people who most seemed like they might need it. Usually he knew their names, but not always.

Part of him wanted to tell the officer that he was sorry but didn't think he could be of help. Police precincts weren't always the safest places to be for people who looked like him, especially if you were there for someone who'd assaulted a cop.

But he'd never been one for leaving a man behind.

Fifteen minutes later, he was walking into the police precinct. He was in the middle of explaining why he was there to the guy at the front desk when he heard the sound of his name.

"Sam?"

He turned, and a wave of surprise and relief washed over him.

"America," he said, a smile stretching his lips. “I didn’t realize you’d switched to the night shift.”

"That's Officer Chavez to you, pal," the woman replied, but she was smiling too. “And you won’t catch me dead on permanent nights. I’m covering for someone. Last time I’m doing that for a while.”

It was then that Sam noticed the ice pack America was holding to her face, and his smile faded.

"You're the one that got hit?" he asked, stepping forward. But America was already waving him off.

"Yeah, and there's no need to make a capital case out of it," she said, with a slight air of exasperation that meant she'd been saying the same thing to her colleagues more than once. "You know how it is when one of our own gets hurt; puts everyone on edge. But I've taken worse hits in high school, and I don't think I'd feel right about locking this guy up, no matter how hard he hit me."

"Why, what happened?"

"Michaels and I were doing rounds when we heard someone screaming. Went to investigate, found this guy in the alley, thrashing around on the ground. I thought someone was attacking him, but there was no one around, and his eyes were closed. He didn't look like he was on anything, so I was pretty sure it was a nightmare."

"And you tried to wake him up."

America gave him a rueful smile, and he realized she had a split lip. He winced.

"Yeah, and boy did that turn out to be a mistake. Dude has one hell of a right hook. But I guess I'm lucky it wasn't his left."

Sam wasn't sure what she meant by that, but she didn't give him the chance to ask before she continued to speak.

"As soon as he realized what was happening, he stopped fighting. After that, he just looked...scared." Something in America's eyes went distant, as she lost herself in the memory. "I thought he was gonna try to run, but then he just...shut down. All we've been able to get out of him since is his name and yours."

She shook her head.

"I don't even think he was awake when he hit me, Sam. How am I supposed to send someone to jail for a nightmare?"

"Can I see him?" Sam asked.

Nodding, America gestured with the hand that wasn't still holding the ice pack to her face. He followed her into a large room full of desks and somewhat organized chaos. It was a Saturday night, so Sam supposed he shouldn't have been surprised.

He knew which desk had to be America's before she even stopped beside it.

"Bucky?" he said in surprise.

Bucky's eyes snapped to his, and Sam did his best not to flinch. The guy didn't look good. There were dark circles around his eyes, which were wide and slightly manic. Every muscle in his body seemed to be stretched to breaking. Sam hadn't seen him look like this in weeks.

"So you do know him?" America asked.

Sam nodded, but didn't take his eyes from Bucky. He took a few careful steps forward.

"Hey, man," he said, pitching his voice low despite the chaos around them. "You all right?"

From this close, he could see the too-rapid rise and fall of Bucky's chest as he breathed in quick spurts. He looked like it was taking every ounce of control he had to stay in his chair.

"Bucky?" Sam asked again, when he got no response. "You with me?"

The rapid pattern of breathing faltered as Bucky dragged in a deep, shuddering breath. He gave Sam a tight nod.

"I'm sorry," he said, and his voice was low and ragged. “I- I didn't mean to."

Something about the way he said it, the quiet devastation in his voice, tugged at Sam's heart. 

"I know, man," he said gently. "We'll figure this out."

He turned to look at America, whose expression had also softened.

"He's a friend of mine," he told her. Because somewhere along the way, that had become true. "He's been working through a pretty rough patch, lately."

She nodded. America knew what Sam's job was, knew the kind of struggles he helped with every day. Lowering the ice pack from her face, she looked at Bucky.

"You feeling any better?" she asked.

He seemed barely able to meet her gaze, but he nodded.

"I'm sorry," he said again, to her this time.

"Apology accepted. I shouldn't have tried to touch you when you were having such a doozy of a nightmare."

Bucky seemed to shudder a little at the memory, but he didn't say anything.

"All right," America sighed. "I assume you want to get out of here, and I, quite frankly, have a pounding headache and don't feel like doing any more paperwork than I have to. So tell you what; if I let you go with my friend Sam here, will you let him look after you tonight?"

After a nervous glance at Sam, Bucky nodded.

"Great. In that case, I don't see a reason to book you. I'm not going to press charges, and given the way this night is going, I'm gonna need that chair for someone else soon enough."

She leaned in to unlock his cuffs, and Bucky flinched away from her ever so slightly. It was unlikely that she missed it, but she didn't say anything. 

The moment she stepped back, cuffs in hand, Bucky sprang out of the chair. Sam sensed a few of the nearby cops tense in response, but America didn't so much as blink.

"You take care of yourself, okay?" she told him. "I don't want to see you in here again."

"That makes two of us," Bucky replied.

Being out of the handcuffs seemed to have restored some of his usual personality. He was still subdued though. Small wonder, Sam thought. He knew enough about Bucky now to realize he must have gone from one nightmare to another when he woke up just in time to get slapped into a pair of cuffs. For someone who'd been held captive twice, it couldn't have brought back any pleasant memories.

But this wasn't the place to deal with that. Sam could already sense the displeasure of some of America's colleagues, who clearly didn't think she was making the right decision by not pressing charges. The less time he and Bucky lingered, the better.

America walked them both to the door, and Sam turned to her once there were fewer eyes around them.

"You sure you're all right?" he asked, nodding at the bruise that was already darkening on her face.

"I am now.” She offered him a wry grin. "Not sure about when I get home though."

Sam smiled back. America’s wife wasn't known for keeping her displeasure quiet.

"Well, you know where to find me if you need backup, officer," he said.

"Roger that."

She waved them off, and Sam led Bucky out of the precinct. He didn't touch him, but he kept a hand hovering at the small of Bucky's back, hoping it would serve as a grounding point.

It was the best he could do.

*****

Bucky could still feel the cold bite of the cuffs around his wrists, even though he'd left them behind in that precinct. They may as well have been made of paper, for all the good they would've done to hold him. But that didn't change what they represented, didn't change the fact that it had been the first time anyone had held him against his will since Hydra.

The association wasn't a pleasant one in his head.

Sam must have sensed how on edge he was, because he didn't say anything as he opened the passenger door of his sedan for Bucky, and then climbed in on his own side. There was music playing through the speakers, something quiet and indie sounding. It wasn't enough to drive the lingering shadows from Bucky's mind.

"So," he said, because he needed to distract himself before his tension wound him into a zone of panic that would cripple him. "You knew that officer?"

“I saved her wife, Kate, back when I was still pararescue. We stayed in touch, and now they're good friends of mine.”

Bucky blinked, and a fresh wave of guilt washed through him.

"I didn't mean to hurt her," he said.

"I know." Sam had said that before, in the precinct. Bucky didn't know how he could sound so confident in the words. "And I'm not gonna tell you it's all right, because we both know it's not, but America's a tough lady. She'll be fine. She'd want you to focus on getting your head straight, rather than worrying about her."

Sighing, Bucky let his head slump against the window. He didn't tell Sam how horrified he'd been when he woke up to see what he'd done to that cop. Her nose had been bleeding, and it was so _red_ , the kind of red that haunted his nightmares. He'd sworn to himself that he would never again hurt anyone who didn't deserve it, would never act as the thoughtless weapon Hydra had created.

But apparently it was instinct now. His default, his nature.

The thought sickened him.

"I'm trying," he murmured.

"I know, man. But you're still not always tackling the right problems. Why were you sleeping on the street tonight? I know you know where the shelters are."

Avoiding his gaze, Bucky shrugged.

"It's raining," he said.

There was a long pause.

"And you didn't want to take up a bed." Sam blew out a breath. "We've talked about this, Bucky. You've got to take care of yourself too."

"I don't..." Bucky shook his head and fell silent. 

There was no point in telling Sam that he didn't deserve to put himself before others. He was already being the worst kind of coward by just laying low rather than trying to hunt down Hydra, or at least telling someone about it. And now he'd attacked someone who'd just been trying to help him.

When he continued to say nothing, Sam let out another sigh. Bucky seemed to have a knack for inciting them from him.

"So, your name is James Grant?"

"No."

Despite his current mood, Bucky still found the expression on Sam's face a little amusing.

"You could at least pretend you weren't lying to the cops, then."

"Would you rather I lied to you?"

Sam's eyes rolled skyward.

"I guess not."

A few more minutes passed by in silence before Bucky realized there was no reason for him to be in the car.

"You can drop me off anywhere," he said. "You've done enough for me already."

He wasn't expecting the glare that Sam sent his way.

"Enough for what, Bucky? For you to start actually giving a damn about yourself?" He didn't wait for Bucky to answer, just shook his head and returned his focus to the road. "I'm driving you to a shelter, and I'm walking you in, and I'm breathing down your neck until your greasy head is on a goddamn pillow."

And that, apparently, was that.


	4. Yuletidings

The entire Wilson family was halfway through _A Charlie Brown Christmas_ when Sam’s phone buzzed in his pocket. Though he gave serious thought to ignoring it, Sam shifted the four year old at his side so he could reach into his pocket for the cell.

When he saw the number, he frowned. It belonged to the VA.

"Sam Wilson," he answered, saying his name almost like a question.

_"Are you okay?"_ The voice on the other end of the line was rougher than Sam was used to hearing it, edged with something that sounded like concern, but still instantly recognizable.

"Bucky? Yeah, I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?"

_"You're not here. No one is."_

"Here? You mean at the VA?" And then Sam understood. "You didn't think we were having group today, did you?"

_"It is Wednesday, right?"_

"Yeah, but it's also Christmas."

There was a long pause. Then, softly, _"oh.”_

Heart squeezing, Sam excused himself from his family and ducked into the kitchen. The dishes from their Christmas lunch were piled high in the sink, the counter cluttered with half-eaten pies and plates of cookies.

"You didn't know, did you?" Sam asked gently, cupping the phone to his mouth.

_"I, uh, I guess I lost track of the days."_

Something buried in Bucky's voice sharpened the ache in Sam's chest. He sounded more than a little lost, but more than that, he sounded…well, if Sam had to put a name to it, he would call it grief.

"That's okay, man," he said. "But yeah, it's Christmas, so no group."

_"Oh. Okay. Sorry to- I mean, you must be with your- your family. So I'll just- I'll see you next week, then."_

It had been a while since Sam had heard Bucky like this. He hadn't missed it.

"Wait," he said, before Bucky could hang up. "Do you-?" He broke off the stupid question. He knew by now that Bucky didn't have a family of his own to be with today, and friends were in pretty short supply for him too.

Sam glanced towards the living room. He'd gotten to spend yesterday with his family, but he'd been looking forward to a nice, quiet Christmas Day with them too.

"Listen, if you hang out at the VA for twenty minutes, I'll be there to pick you up. We can go try some new coffee flavors."

_“Sam, you don’t have to do that,"_ Bucky protested at once, sounding even more miserable. _"You should be with your family."_

"And you shouldn't have to be alone on Christmas. Besides, you're doing me a favor. My sister and my mom have been going at it all day, and I could use the peace and quiet."

Of course, said sister chose that moment to walk into the kitchen, an empty sippy cup in her hand. She raised an eyebrow at Sam.

"20 minutes," Sam repeated hurriedly before hanging up on Bucky. He grimaced at his sister, who had set the cup down so that she could prop both hands on her hips and stare him down.

"So, who was that you were just blatantly lying to?" she asked.

"Someone who doesn't need any extra guilt on his shoulders." Sam leaned in to kiss her cheek. "I gotta go."

"What, now?"

She trailed behind him as he said hurried goodbyes to the rest of his family, and then followed him out into the biting December day.

"Are you seriously dropping everything for this guy?" she asked as they approached his car.

The question gave Sam pause. He thought back to how Bucky had sounded on the phone. Then he met his sister's gaze squarely.

"Leave no man behind," he said. "Trust me, this guy needs that right now."

She searched his gaze for a long moment, and then sighed. She gave him one last hug.

"Merry Christmas, Sam. I hope one day you'll find someone else who deserves you."

*****

Twenty minutes later, Sam was sitting across from Bucky at a table in their favorite coffee shop. Christmas music was jingling from the speakers, and the shop was covered in enough paper snowflakes to require a shovel. Sam and Bucky were two of the only patrons there, the others either unwilling to brave the hostile December weather, or occupied with other holiday plans. 

Bucky was determined to try every flavor the place had to offer, and he had a peppermint mocha cradled between his palms now. He seemed unduly fascinated by the curls of steam twisting through the air above it, because he didn't take his eyes from them.

"I'm sorry you had to leave your family to come babysit me."

Sam frowned. As he and Bucky had gotten more comfortable with each other, they rarely bothered apologizing for anything. That sort of politeness had been lost to snark and attitude weeks ago. It was this, more than anything, that told Sam he'd made the right decision by coming here.

"You shouldn't apologize when what you really mean is 'thank you,'" he said.

Scowling, Bucky lifted his gaze at last. His features flickered through a spectrum of different expressions before settling halfway between a grimace and something more complicated.

"I just-" His fingers flexed around his mug, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. "It kind of snuck up on me, I guess."

Sam studied him for a moment.

"This the first Christmas you'd spent alone?"

For some reason, the question made Bucky let out a huff of grim amusement.

"More or less," he said.

Not for the first time, Sam wondered about Bucky's story. The real, whole thing, not the disconnected and edited pieces he'd been getting for the last two months. This didn't feel like the time to ask for it though.

"Not a fun day to be on your own," he said instead.

"Not so much, no."

Bucky's gaze was a thousand miles away. Sam could all but see the memories playing out behind those pale eyes.

"Tell me about one of the good ones."

"The good what?"

"Christmases."

There must have been some. Bucky wouldn't look the way he did now if he weren't comparing today to better memories. Still, such a long time passed that Sam all but gave up on getting an answer.

He would have been content to sit there and finish his coffee in silence, but at last Bucky spoke.

"I was in the middle of a war, for the last one," he said. "I'd forgotten about it then, too. When every day is a fight, you kind of stop keeping track of them, you know?"

Sam had spent most of his time deployed hyper aware of how long he had been over there, but he nodded.

"We'd all forgotten, my whole team. But then we ran our mission, and when we reported it in, the guy on the radio wished us a Merry Christmas." A small smirk tugged at the corners of Bucky's mouth. "You should've seen us gaping at each other. Not a one of us had remembered, and the guys with wives or sweethearts all started panicking, because they knew they were in trouble. Guess it wasn't quite as bad as forgetting an anniversary, but it was close."

"I'd imagine so.”

Bucky's lips quirked up in response to Sam’s chuckle, but then his gaze went distant again as the memory continued to unspool.

"I didn't have anyone special back home, so I wasn't worried about that. S- my friend, though…"

Sam's heart lurched. He didn't have to ask which friend Bucky was talking about. He'd never once mentioned anyone by name in his stories, but there was an unmistakable change that overtook his whole demeanor when he talked about one person in particular. His best friend, before the war and through it. Lost while Bucky was being held captive for the second time. At any mention of the man, something in Bucky’s eyes would soften, even as grief tightened his features and his shoulders hunched. Now, there was a note of tenderness in his voice as he went on.

"He felt terrible that he hadn't gotten me anything. I told him not to be an idiot. I mean, we were in the middle of a war, and I'd forgotten too. But you know, it was a thing with us. We had practically nothing growing up, but we still always managed to scrounge up something for each other. One year, I even tried to knit a hat for him, because I couldn't afford to buy him anything, and he was always cold." Bucky let out another huff of air, his lips tugging into a wry grimace. "It came out looking more like a bird nest, but you get the idea.”

Again, Bucky's brief moment of amusement faded as quickly as it had come on. Shadows flickered through his ancient eyes and he lifted a hand to his chest, so absentmindedly that Sam wasn't sure he was even aware of the action.

"Anyway, I told him it was fine. We could have a real Christmas when the war was over. But I think-" The corners of Bucky's mouth tightened, and his voice went low. He still wasn't looking at Sam. "I think maybe he could tell I didn't really believe I'd see the end of the war. Not by then."

The breath caught in Sam's chest, and his throat tightened. He knew exactly what Bucky was describing. He'd seen it in too many others before. Those who had been through so much, seen so much, that every last spark of optimism had been ground out of them. It pained him that Bucky had been one of those people.

It took a moment for Bucky to go on. His hand was still pressed against his chest, as if he were searching for something there.

"Or maybe he just didn't want to wait, I don't know." Bucky shook his head. "But he just reached for his tags, took one off, and handed it to me. Like it was the most natural thing in the world."

"He gave you one of his dog tags?" Sam asked, startled into interrupting. It was no small thing. The whole purpose of dog tags was to identify a soldier; they were worse than useless in anyone else's possession. Sharing them went against a whole slew of military regulations.

Blinking, Bucky glanced up at Sam as if he'd forgotten he was there. He grimaced.

"Yeah. It was stupid, and it could've gotten us both in trouble, but I let him do it. I-" He shook his head again, let out a heavy breath.

A beat of silence passed by, then another.

The hand over Bucky's chest curled into a fist, which he dropped into his lap.

"They took my tags when they captured me." The words were raw with pain that had yet to heal. “I guess, of all the things they took, it shouldn't seem like such a big deal, but…" He shook his head, his jaw clenching.

"But it was like they were taking him away from you, too," Sam finished gently.

Bucky gave a jerky nod. After a moment, he reached for his coffee and took a mechanical sip. His shoulders were stiff, his expression guarded. Sam wasn't sure he'd meant to share quite so much.

For a minute, he hesitated. He hadn't wanted to press too hard in the past, for he could tell this loss was one of Bucky's most painful wounds.

"This is your first Christmas without him, isn't it?" he asked now.

"I- sort of. I don't know. Feels like it." Bucky folded his arms over his abdomen now, eyes darting to the door with a longing that told Sam he was considering bolting from this conversation.

Sam wasn't quite sure what to make of the answer, but the details weren't important. He remembered what it had been like to lose Riley, how nothing had made sense and occasions that should have been happy just seemed empty and cruel instead. He thought about some of the things that had brought him some small sense of closure in such times.

"Do you know where he's buried?" he asked.

Bucky's jaw clenched, and stark, breathtaking agony overcame his expression for a flash of an instant before he got it under control again.

"His body was never recovered. He- he's still out there somewhere, alone. And I wasn't- I can't-"

He broke off, pushing his chair away from the table. He didn't get up though, just froze there, his hands braced against the edge of the table and his head bowed. Sam reached across the space separating them, and after a moment's hesitation, settled his hand on Bucky's. Tendons as tight as piano wires met his touch, and he could feel the faint tremors rippling through his friend. His own throat ached.

"There was nothing you could have done for him," he said gently, knowing the words would be of little help but needing to say them anyway.

"I could have been there."

"Like I was there for Riley?"

Bucky's head came up at that. He knew the story. He knew Sam had been less than ten yards away when Riley got blown out of the sky.

They held each other's gaze for a moment. Part challenge, part mutual understanding. 

At last, Bucky's grip on the table loosened, and he settled back in his chair. The movement pulled his hand from beneath Sam's, and he withdrew it, fingertips still humming with the constant warmth of Bucky's skin.

*****

By mutual, unspoken agreement, the two of them left the heavy conversation topics behind. In their place came whatever random thoughts popped to mind. They spent almost half an hour on a meaningless debate about vinyl versus digital, and another twenty minutes arguing about whether or not cucumbers were fruits. When the barista started giving them dirty looks, they ordered another round of coffees so as not to get kicked out.

Through it all, Sam watched Bucky. It had been less than two months since he'd first met the man. In some ways, it felt like it had been two years. But in other ways, Bucky was as much a stranger to him as he had been on that cold night in the alley.

This was starting to bother him more than it ever had with any of the other vets. He wasn’t sure he wanted to think too hard about why.

Sam wasn't an idiot. He knew there was something strange about Bucky. The dude only ever talked about what he'd been through in vague terms, and he normally avoided personal questions like it was going out of style. He always seemed to be operating under tin hat levels of paranoia when they were out in public. He was way stronger than he should've been, and his history knowledge was either weirdly specific or utterly nonexistent. Sam was pretty sure he didn't even know who the president before Ellis had been until one of the vets made some offhand complaint about him in a session.

But Sam trusted his instincts, which told him that Bucky was a good guy who’d been through a lot of shit and was just trying to figure out his way forward. And today had felt like something of a breakthrough, limited and painful though it might have been.

Now that Bucky had relaxed a little, returned to his usual self, Sam wanted to capitalize on that progress. See if he couldn’t help Bucky through another important step in his recovery.

“Have you tried looking for a job?” Sam asked him during a lull in their conversation about an extinct species of pigeon.

Bucky had been stirring his third coffee, but now he put the spoon down and took a sip. Judging by his expression, his flavor finding mission had just bit him in the ass.

"Whose idea was it to put pumpkins in beverages?" he asked, pursing his lips.

"Well, that's a question for the ages, isn't it? If you don't like it, quit bitching about it and ask for something else."

"No. I paid good money for this weird-ass coffee, and I'm not wasting it."

That was another thing about Bucky. He couldn't abide waste, be it of food, paper, whatever. Sam had seen him fish a half-eaten banana out of the trash once. He’d promptly complained about bananas not tasting right anymore, but he’d eaten it anyway, much to Sam’s horror.

"If you had a job, you might not have to worry about wasting one cup of coffee."

Bucky glared at him, and Sam gave him a blithe smile.

"Doubt anyone would want me," Bucky grumbled.

"Ah, don't sell yourself short. There's lots of things you could do. You could be a one-man moving crew, a bodyguard…I bet you could even find someone to hire you as a stunt double.”

When Bucky just kept scowling at him, Sam sighed.

"Seriously, man. Part of my job is helping guys like you get back on their feet. I know lots of places that like to hire vets when they can. I can help you find something."

Frowning, Bucky dropped his gaze. His shoulders were hunched, making him appear smaller than he usually did.

"I'm not ready, Sam."

"Not ready, how? Not ready to let yourself off the hook?"

Bucky skewered him with another glare. "You don't even know what the hook is."

"No, but I do know you don't need to keep torturing yourself. Who, exactly, is it helping?"

He got no answer. Bucky shook his head, looking harried. Sam knew he was pushing his luck, but he didn't stop.

"I've seen so many people come through my programs at the VA. They were all where you are, once. Some of them are back out there in the world, living their lives, working, raising families. And some of them are in the ground. I don't wanna see you in the second group."

"Maybe it's where I belong."

The words were quiet, but they chilled Sam, sent something ugly twisting through his gut. The warmth of the holiday atmosphere and good company drained from him in an instant.

" _No_." He stood, pressed his palms flat to the table as he leaned towards Bucky. "Don't you even try to give me that shit. So damn many people never got to come back, but you did. And now you're talking about it like it's nothing, like it's some _burden_. That's some serious bullshit."

Not waiting for a response, he pushed himself away from the table and turned to stalk out of the coffee shop.

*****

Bucky watched Sam storm out of the shop with no small degree of surprise. In the few months he’d known Sam, he’d never seen him come close to losing his temper. But his shock soon gave way to a sick pit in his stomach.

Of course Sam was pissed.

Abandoning his pumpkin spice coffee at last, Bucky scrambled to follow his...his friend.

He had to battle a sharp gust of snow-laden wind to get the door open, and he made it outside just in time to see the dark blue of Sam's sedan turning the corner at the end of the block, tires crunching over the salted road. 

Bucky stopped, gut lurching again.

Part of him wanted to leave it at that. He'd always known his relationship with Sam would end, most likely badly. There was no point in fighting the inevitable.

But that was an excuse, and he knew it. And Sam was right. It was time to stop wasting the chances he kept getting.

So he zipped up his jacket, shoved his hands in his pockets, and started walking.

He had the streets mostly to himself. Not many people could stand weather like this, but it didn't seem to touch him. He'd always had a higher tolerance for cold than most, but whatever Hydra had done to him when they fixed his head had left him impervious to it entirely. It was weird, and more than a little unsettling, but he couldn't deny that it was useful.

The walk took him over half an hour. But then he was standing on a doorstep he'd never seen before, hand poised over a doorbell. When he finally mustered up the wherewithal to press the button, it didn't take long for him to hear the sounds of movement on the other side of the door.

"You walked here, didn't you." Sam looked more disapproving than angry as he surveyed Bucky.

"You don't have to let me in. I just wanted to say, I'm sorry. Really, Sam.”

Bucky shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, but managed to hold his friend’s gaze. He took a breath.

“You’ve done so much for me, and I’m a selfish, ungrateful jackass to complain about still being here when Riley never got that chance, and so many people like him. I'm gonna try to do better. I'll pick up one of those job pamphlets you're always leaving around."

Running out of words, he looked down, resisting the urge to scuff his boots against the pavement. He hadn’t cared this much about a personal relationship for seventy years, and it was more stressful than he’d remembered.

He felt Sam studying him, and after a long moment, he glanced up again. Sam’s expression softened a little, and he sighed.

“I shouldn’t have lost my cool like that,” he said. “You’re definitely not the only one who’s ever had survivor’s guilt. I just…”

Shaking his head, he took a step to the side. He nodded for Bucky to come in.

The house’s interior was nice; small, but comfortable and well cared for. It was one level, and from the small foyer he could see into both the kitchen and the living room. Sam kept all of it neat, perhaps a residual habit of his time in the military.

It had been years since Bucky had been invited into anyone's house, and he didn't really know what to do with himself. Sam noticed.

"If you take those nasty-ass boots off, you can come sit on the couch," he said, pointing into the living room. 

Bucky frowned. He almost never took his boots off. Which Sam probably knew, so this was another way to push him out of his comfort zone.

Sighing, he complied.

"You know what?" Sam said, making a face as he pressed his sleeve over his nose. "I changed my mind. If you're spending one more second in this house, you need to shower first."

Bucky supposed that was fair. He turned to head for the door again.

"Dude, I meant in mine. I'm not _that_ pissed at you."

He hadn't expected that. The offer was genuine though, and soon he was standing under a hot spray of water in Sam’s guest bathroom. It felt better than he'd let himself expect. Better than just about anything he'd experienced in about seventy years, really. He'd taken showers since escaping Hydra, of course, but they were usually rushed, chilly affairs, dictated by how many quarters he was able to spare for public showers.

For all that he hadn't intended to take advantage of Sam's hospitality, he found himself lingering in the shower far longer than necessary. When he finally left the bathroom, borrowed towel around his waist, it was to find that Sam had left out a pair of sweats and a t-shirt for him. The shirt was a little tight around his arms and shoulders, but he didn’t hear the sound of any seams splitting.

He emerged into the living room a few minutes later to find Sam sitting on the couch, reading a paperback. As Bucky approached, he slipped a finger between the pages of his book, and looked up.

"I'd say you clean up nice, but you look like a soggy poodle."

Bucky grinned, and shook out his hair. Sputtering in protest, Sam raised his book as a shield from the flying droplets.

"Do that again, and I'm coming after you with scissors," he said. "And not the good kind, those safety ones they give to kindergarteners to make sure they don't cut their fingers off. All you'd have left up there would be a couple of clumps."

"I think I could take you."

"Just try me, bucko."

Raising his hands in surrender, Bucky let himself drop down onto the couch with more force than was necessary. But Sam didn't react to being jostled. His gaze had dropped to Bucky's left arm, left mostly exposed by the t-shirt.

"I didn't even think about that," he said. "Was it okay to get it wet?"

"It was designed to withstand just about everything, showers included.”

Looking down at the arm, Bucky made a fist. He kept it covered most of the time, but now he watched as the plates rippled and moved.

"Do you ever take it off?"

"I..." The question threw Bucky a little. He generally tried to avoid thinking about those early days, when he'd first gotten the arm. "I don't think I can, honestly."

That drew a frown from Sam. He set his book aside and turned to face Bucky fully.

"You don't _think_?" he asked. "You mean, you don't know if that thing is permanently fused to your body or not?"

The intensity of his scrutiny made Bucky uncomfortable. He shrugged and looked away.

"I think parts of it are connected to my nervous system," he said, because he knew Sam well enough by now to realize he wouldn't let his questions go unanswered. "So it would probably take surgery to get it out. But I don't really know."

There was a long beat of silence that Bucky didn't try to fill.

"Bucky...did you ask for that arm? Did you get it voluntarily?" There was something strange about Sam's voice, and Bucky chanced a look at him. Sam was watching him with open concern and more than a little suspicion.

Bucky didn't know how to answer the question without getting into everything that had happened to him. But his silence was apparently answer enough.

"Jesus," Sam whispered. He looked away, but quickly turned back to Bucky. "Was it our guys? Or did they experiment on you when you were a POW?"

There was no easy way to answer that either.

"A little of both, I guess." Bucky shrugged, wishing they were still talking about pretty much anything else. "It's fine, Sam. At least I can use both arms."

"One of which was forced on you. Bucky, you have to know that's not okay."

"It's not like it's the worst thing they did to me." Bucky didn't understand why Sam was making such a big deal out of this.

"It's not?"

Bucky couldn't help it; he laughed. It was an ugly sound, dark and humorless. It made Sam's expression twist that much further.

Guilt twinged through Bucky’s gut. Sam didn’t need this dumped on him, especially not after everything he’d already done for Bucky today.

He could feel Sam's gaze burning into him, but he avoided it. He looked down at the hand instead, studying the network of grooves on his palm. He hoped Sam didn't ask him again how long he'd spent in captivity, because he really didn't want to lie to his friend.

"Did they ever get the people who did this to you?"

Surprised, Bucky raised his head.

"What do you mean?"

"What do you mean, what do I mean? Someone did this to you, but you got out. Are those people dead or in jail?"

"The first people are. My friend took care of that."

A small smile tugged at Bucky's lips, even though it wasn't exactly a fond memory. He'd barely been coherent when Steve came for him in that Hydra facility, and it had been something of a shock to see what his best friend had done to himself. The worst had been knowing that Steve was no longer safe at home, and never would be again. But he’d also been Bucky’s salvation.

"He came for me and helped get me out, and we managed to get them back pretty good. But the second time..." Bucky shrugged again, trying to hide how uncomfortable the thought was making him. "Not sure that's a fight that can be won."

His own words stabbed at his insides.

He'd been trying so hard not to think about Hydra. For weeks, he'd been haunted by the memories of what he'd done, all the lives he'd taken. It had helped to distract him from everything that had been done to him, from the knowledge that the network Steve had died trying to stop was still out there. Still plotting and planning and hurting people, while he slept behind dumpsters and tried to keep himself from drowning in his own head.

Without making the conscious decision to stand, he was on his feet. He headed back to the bathroom, locked himself in.

He half expected Sam to follow him, to start pounding on the door, but he must have sensed that Bucky needed to be left alone just then. Not that anything good would come of it. Bucky braced himself against the sink, stomach churning as he grimaced at his reflection.

He wondered if Steve would recognize him, like this. His hair was long and tangled around his face as it dried, and an unkempt beard covered his cheeks. But his eyes were the most unrecognizable part of him. They were heavy and cold, ringed with shadows. They were the eyes of a murderer.

Bucky closed them, unable to stand the sight. At least Steve would never see him like this.

It was the coldest of comforts. Steve would have handled this so much better. If he'd been in Bucky's place, he wouldn't rest until Hydra was in flames. He wouldn't wallow in depression and fear, doing nothing with his life but whining to strangers.

The knowledge that Steve would be disappointed in him cut deeper than any of Hydra's knives ever had.

*****

When he'd finally pulled himself together enough to leave the bathroom, he found Sam still sitting on the couch, reading his book like Bucky hadn't just fallen apart right in front of him. He didn’t glance up to see the redness of Bucky’s eyes, the faint, lingering tremor in his human hand. Bucky was grateful for his attitude, for the chance to pretend like nothing had happened. He knew Sam probably wanted him to talk, to get his feelings off his chest or whatever, but there were some burdens he wasn't ready to inflict on his friend.

Sam must have gotten up at some point though, because there was a mug of coffee that didn't smell anything like pumpkin sitting on the coffee table, next to a blueberry scone. Tossing Sam a look of gratitude that went ignored, Bucky scooped them both up.

He braced himself as he ate, but Sam didn't ask him any questions. Maybe he sensed that Bucky was a few questions away from bolting, or having a complete breakdown. Instead, he let Bucky finish his scone and coffee in a silence that was only interrupted by the occasional sound of a page turning.

"So, what are your thoughts on _The Office_?"

Bucky blinked and looked at Sam over the rim of his nearly empty mug.

"What office?"

"The show."

"Never heard of it."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Sam had been surprised by Bucky's lack of pop culture knowledge before, but this time, he seemed to be genuinely both horrified and offended.

"I'm, uh, guessing it's a show about...an office?" Bucky tried. Sam just looked that much more apoplectic.

"Jesus Christ, this is a tragedy." Sam scooped a remote from the coffee table and switched on his TV. "No way am I letting this stand."

*****

Four episodes in, Bucky was still trying to figure out what was so funny about a bunch of people who shouldn't have been working together. Of course, each time he didn't laugh at what were apparently jokes, Sam got more annoyed, so it was still a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Eventually, Sam gave up, and they switched to a show called _Parks and Rec_. When Sam glared at Bucky the first time he laughed, he just smiled that much wider.

They watched TV for the rest of the afternoon. It was something of a new experience for Bucky, who hadn't watched much TV before. He'd known it was out there, of course, had by this point seen plenty of sports and news programs in local bars with Sam. But he'd been headed off to war when the first televisions were making their way into the households of the wealthy American elite, and he and Steve had rarely had the money to spare to go see a picture at their local nickelodeon. And later, his handlers hadn't considered shows and movies to be important things to be briefed on before missions.

It was a Saturday, so Sam didn't have any work to do, and he didn't seem to mind Bucky hanging around. He ordered pizza for both of them, despite Bucky's awkward insistence that he could find his own dinner. He'd already accepted so much help from Sam, and he didn't like not being able to pay him back.

"Oh, I'm keeping a tab, don't you worry," Sam informed him. "You're paying me back once you get that job you promised me. Now, what are your thoughts on Hawaiian pizza? And before you answer, know that the next words out of your mouth will decide whether or not you're ever welcome in this house again."

Bucky must have gotten the answer correct, and soon they were back on the couch, watching old episodes of _Star Trek_ this time. It was a much different tone, but still enjoyable. There was something oddly relaxing about the old sets, the clumsy acting. It allowed Bucky to distance himself from it a little, to recognize it as the fiction it was. Made it almost familiar, in a way.

Sam told him the show aired in the sixties. Maybe Bucky would have watched it live, had his life taken another path. Maybe he and Steve would have watched it together, argued about their favorite characters. Steve would have liked these stories of other worlds, of a time where humans no longer fought one another for idiotic reasons.

"Hey. Where's your head?"

Something must have shifted in Bucky's expression, because Sam was looking at him with concern. He shook his head.

"I'm fine," he said. "I was just...wondering how things might've gone differently."

"You can't do that to yourself. Not a damn thing can come of it."

"I know that," Bucky sighed. "But you seem to have too much confidence in my ability to make my brain stop.”

“That would imply I thought it started in the first place.”

Bucky threw a piece of pepperoni at him.

*****

It was only when Bucky's head drooped onto Sam's shoulder that he realized how tired he'd gotten. He thought about moving, really he did, but then Sam was slumping against him too, and Bucky could hear in the rhythm of his breaths that he was near sleep, and it would hardly be polite to wake him up. Not that Bucky was in the habit of putting much effort towards politeness when it came to Sam, but in this case it seemed like the prudent thing to do.

As he let his head settle more comfortably on Sam's shoulder, it occurred to him that he couldn't remember the last time he'd been so relaxed. Before Hydra, certainly, before the fall that had stolen his old life. Maybe not since a lifetime ago, in Brooklyn with his best friend.

Maybe a lazy summer evening in 1940, the workday over and both of them healthy, a little money saved, for once. A quiet moment, just the two of them, Bucky's head in Steve's lap and a Jules Verne novel in his hands, the soft scratching of Steve's pencil over the pages of his sketchbook a comforting backdrop to the hazy stillness.

Normally, thoughts of Steve filled him with a complicated and painful mix of grief and regret. In that moment though, sleepy and comfortable and safer than he'd thought possible and not alone at the edge of sleep, the pain couldn't seem to touch him. Instead, the memories brought with them that much more warmth, a greater sense of peace. He surrendered himself to it, letting the sounds of Sam's breathing and distant chatter from the TV lull him further towards sleep.

He was more asleep than awake when he vaguely registered Sam moving, leaving the couch. Bucky curled deeper into the warm spot left behind, not thinking to question the pillow that got shoved under his head, the blanket that was draped over his shoulders. He was asleep before the sound of retreating footsteps and a closing door had even reached him.

*****

Bucky was woken by the sounds of voices. His eyes snapped open, treating him to view of Sam's ass.

"God, warn a guy," he grumbled, throwing an arm over his face.

"Hey, this is a gift," Sam retorted, shimmying his hips. "I felt bad for not getting you a Christmas present."

He stepped to the side though, and batted Bucky's legs aside so he could sit on the other end of the couch. The majority of his attention was focused on the TV, which had been the source of the voices. When Bucky looked at the screen, he could see why it had captured Sam's attention.

"Jesus." He pushed himself upright, and leaned towards the TV. "Is he dead?"

The news was showing a series of video clips. First the President of the United States strung up over an oil tanker, confined in the brightly colored Iron Patriot armor. Then the tanker and surrounding shipyard in flames, burning wreckage falling everywhere, explosions lighting the sky. Then shaky, amateur footage of what looked like people glowing red, flames seeming to come from within them before they too blew up.

"No, Iron Man and Iron Patriot saved him," Sam said, still not looking away from the TV. "Blew the whole ship, from the looks of it."

And then some.

The video feed switched to what appeared to be a live shot, a news anchor standing in front of what was now just smoldering wreckage as the sun began to light the sky behind her.

_“Here in Miami, the docks you see behind me are where President Matthew Ellis was nearly killed last night in an elaborate plot that could have changed the nation forever. We've received word that the President is alive and well, thanks to a timely rescue by well-known inventor and Avenger Tony Stark, also known as Iron Man. Stark was joined by Air Force Colonel James Rhodes, the Iron Patriot, in stopping the assassination._

_“Details are still coming in, but we've received word that this attack was orchestrated by Aldrich Killian of Advanced Idea Mechanics, an experimental biotechnology firm that is now thought to be behind the recent explosions that were claimed as terrorist attacks by the man known as The Mandarin."_

They showed a clip of the poorly groomed old guy who had been dominating the news cycle for the past several days. In this particular video, he was pontificating about fortune cookies, for some reason beyond Bucky's understanding.

"Is this kind of thing normal nowadays?" Bucky asked, staring at the TV.

"Starting to look that way."

The news anchor proceeded to tell them that the Vice President had been in on the plot, because AIM had promised him a way to regrow his daughter's amputated leg.

_"AIM is thought to have been working on experimental nanotechnology inspired by the famous serum that gave Captain America his incredible abilities in 1943. As we’ve seen in the past, attempts to recreate that serum are rarely successful, and often catastrophic. We'll have more on that, and the response from the White House, after the break."_

The woman vanished from the screen, to be replaced by an add for erectile disfunction medication.

"Well." Sam lowered the volume and sat back, still staring blankly at the TV. He didn't seem to know what else to say.

"People have kept trying to recreate Erskine's serum?" Bucky asked, gut churning.

"Oh yeah, for years. That's how we got the Hulk,” Sam said, like that was supposed to mean something to Bucky. “Banner was trying to make his own serum, but it turned him into a big green rage machine instead."

Bucky folded his arms over his abdomen, curling in on himself. A shiver rippled through him as he tried not to lose himself in memories of his own experience with someone trying to recreate the serum.

"Why can't people just accept that Steve was one of a kind?" he heard himself ask, little more than a whisper. "They'll never be able to recreate what he was, serum or no."

"You may be right, but I don't think that's gonna stop them from trying. Especially now that Cap's back and people have seen for themselves what he can do."

The words froze Bucky in place as he tried to make sense of them. He gave it a minute, but came up with nothing.

"What do you mean, now that Cap's back?" he asked, sitting up. "You mean the guy they got to replace Steve Rogers?"

Just saying the words hurt. Sam turned fully away from the TV to give him a baffled look.

"No? I mean Steve Rogers, the guy they pulled out of the ice a couple years back. War hero, part-time Avenger, helped save the world from aliens last year? Ringing any bells?"

Bucky could feel his heart starting to pound, sweat breaking over his skin. But he felt oddly detached, as if he was watching himself have this conversation with Sam, rather than actively participating in it.

"Are you-" Bucky's voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. "Are you telling me that - that Steve Rogers, the original Captain America, who died in 1945, is still alive?"

"Uh, yeah?" Sam was looking at Bucky with some concern now. "They found his plane two years ago, frozen in the Arctic. When they tried to recover his body, they realized he was still alive. They were able to thaw him, and now he's out there, good as new."

He paused, scrutinizing Bucky. 

"Did you seriously not know this? I mean, I get that you might’ve missed out on the finer points of history and pop culture while you were captive, or living under a rock, or whatever, but this was huge news. Like, rocked the world news. And he's been out there for like two years now."

But Bucky wasn't really listening.

_Steve was alive._


	5. Ghosts that We Knew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update took so long! Grad school kept me super busy, and this chapter needed more work than I thought. Hope you enjoy!

"Whoa, hey, what's wrong?"

Bucky didn't realize he'd slid off the couch until Sam was crouching beside him, hands on his shoulders. There was a strange rattling noise, which he realized was coming from his shaking metal arm hitting the glass of the coffee table.

"Bucky, breathe. I'm serious, man, take a breath. _Bucky_."

Still numb and shaking, Bucky obeyed on instinct. Air rushed into his lungs, but it brought him no clarity, no relief.

_Steve was alive._

"Yeah, he is." Bucky must have said the words aloud, and Sam was still talking to him. "He's doing great, kicking ass and taking names. Take it easy, Bucky, everything's fine. You're fine."

He shoved the coffee table aside so he could crouch in front of Bucky, look him in the eyes. Whatever he saw there must have alarmed him, because he put his other hand on Bucky’s back.

“All right, I need you to put your head between your knees for me. Now breathe with me, okay? In. Come on, I’m gonna look stupid doing this by myself. Breathe in. Good. Now out.”

Through his numbness, his shock, through the chaos of his world rearranging itself, Bucky was reminded of those early days with Steve. Coaxing him through asthma attacks, doing whatever it took to keep his friend breathing. Although he was usually on the other side of it, he knew the drill, and his body complied instinctively with Sam’s steady commands.

“Can you talk to me, Bucky? Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

But he couldn't. He couldn't speak, could barely think.

All this time, Steve had been alive. Hydra hadn't been lying about his death, but Steve had beaten the odds, like he always did. He'd come back, he was out there. _He was alive._

It was too much to process, and Bucky jerked back from Sam, his back hitting the couch. He curled in on himself, hiding his face in his hands as he struggled to keep breathing.

He didn't know how long he sat like that, his world shaking to pieces around him. Sam stayed at his side, telling him to breathe, telling him that it was all right, that whatever this was would pass.

*****

It took a while, but he did finally manage to pull himself together enough to lift his face from his hands and look at Sam, who helped him to his feet. He pushed Bucky into the kitchen, sat him down in a chair, and made them both tea. Bucky had always been more of a coffee drinker, but the mug was warm and smelled of honey and lemon, and he cupped it close in his human hand.

A part of him wanted nothing more than to use his considerable tracking skills to find Steve. Sam’s word was more than enough for his brain to accept the truth, but his heart wouldn’t truly believe that Steve was alive until he saw him in person. But the mere thought of that encounter filled him with such raw, unbridled panic that he shoved it aside at once.

So instead he waited there at Sam’s kitchen table, dreading the interrogation that was sure to follow. But Sam just watched him in silence, his face impassive.

"I have a couple books about Captain America," he said, voice quiet. "You can read them if you want. I think I also have a documentary about him somewhere, if you want to watch it."

Bucky didn't know how to respond. He didn't think he could stand to watch a documentary, to see the old footage of himself at Steve's side, back when he deserved to be there. Nor could he bear seeing Steve as he was now, still strong and brave and fighting for good, while Bucky wallowed in the trauma of his past and tried to sleep through the bloodbath that haunted his dreams every night.

But the thought of not knowing how Steve was doing, what he’d been up to when Bucky wasn't there to have his back, was just as unbearable. So he waited on the couch while Sam perused his shelves and came back a moment later to hold out a hardcover to him.

The sight of the glossy cover knocked the breath from Bucky’s lungs all over again. There was Steve, staring at some point in the distance, colorful shield raised. It was clearly a modern picture; he was wearing a newer uniform than any Bucky had ever seen, and the detail was fine enough to count his pores. Bucky reached for the book with his left hand to hide the trembling in his right, and then just held it for a moment, trying to ride out the storm inside him.

For seventy years, he’d been missing Steve. Even when everything had been stripped away from him, that hollow ache had remained, deep in his soul. And now…well, the ache remained, but it had taken on a different shape. Because Steve was still every inch the hero he’d been, wasn’t he? Bucky was anything but.

Realizing he’d been staring down at the book for several minutes now, Bucky forced himself to open it. Its chapters were divided into two sections, before and after Steve’s apparent death.

As he read the table of contents, a jolt passed through Bucky. His own name was in two of the chapter titles, one right at the beginning and the other closer to the end of the pre-ice years. Bucky thought he could guess what the latter was about, and he gave it a wide berth. He started instead with a description of Steve’s final mission against Hydra and the Red Skull.

From the first word, it felt strange and unsettling to be reading about his best friend’s life like this. His discomfort was soon eclipsed though, replaced by something darker as he read through the Red Skull’s death, and started in on the transcript that followed. It was of Steve’s last conversation with Peggy Carter, him informing her that he was going to steer the bomb-laden _Valkyrie_ to a crash landing in the ice. Refusing to let her talk him out of killing himself. The text began to blur on the page as Bucky read that final goodbye, words the public had no goddamn right to, words he himself had no right to.

_“This is my choice,”_ said the Steve of seventy years ago.

There was a rustling thump as the book hit the floor, and Bucky realized he was on his feet. His breaths were coming faster, his heart pounding, and he itched to…to what? To go find Steve and shake him for being so stupid? To pull him into the tightest hug of either of their lives?

And then what? Explain to Steve why he himself was still alive, what he’d been doing while Steve was trapped in the ice? Hydra had stolen the courage it would take to face the wreckage of that encounter.

“Bucky?” Sam had retreated to the kitchen, but now he was leaning around the doorframe, peering at Bucky with eyes that were far too perceptive.

“I’m fine,” Bucky told him, although it was far from the truth.

He managed to take a deep, steadying breath, and he stooped to pick up the fallen book. It was a long time before he could open it again.

Things were a little less agonizing, moving forward, but that didn’t make the going easy. The book’s puffed up author, with a Ph.D. behind his name and a self-satisfied smile in the picture he'd included in the dust jacket, saw fit to psychoanalyze Steve. He spouted endless bullshit about the trauma of waking up in a different century, talking about how big a deal it was that Steve had managed to rally and lead the newly-formed Avengers through some kind of alien attack. That last part was something that under just about any other circumstances would have been enough to capture Bucky's undivided attention, but now he just breezed past it, caught up in his growing rage.

This schmuck wrote like he knew Steve, but Bucky knew his friend wouldn't have talked to some stranger about all this. Steve knew how much hope people took from Captain America as a symbol, and he’d always tried to keep that symbol as untarnished as possible. It was only when he was with just Bucky, or the rest of the Howlies, that he let his guard down, let himself be Steve Rogers, the man, the person who worried about being good enough and strong enough and brave enough for a world that so desperately needed a hero.

Despite his anger at this violation of Steve's privacy, Bucky kept reading. Each new piece of information was like a gift, even as it cut into him. Each word was a reminder that Steve was still alive, still out there. Some small restitution for the cruel joke the universe had played in keeping Bucky alive.

Distracted as he was, he still registered Sam moving quietly about the house, working on his computer, making lunch, reading a book of his own. He never disturbed Bucky, although the looks he sent his way grew more frequent and concerned. Bucky knew he was being rude, that he had probably well overstayed whatever welcome he'd had to begin with, but he didn't know how to face the idea of heading back out into the world that now had Steve Rogers in it.

By the time he set the biography aside at last, Sam had settled with his laptop on the other end of the couch. He lifted his gaze to Bucky's.

"You all right?" he asked.

Bucky almost laughed.

"I'll be fine," he said, even though he had no idea whether or not it was the truth. He just knew he didn't want Sam to know who he was, to compare him to that man in the history books. Bucky wasn't him anymore.

He got to his feet, looking around uncertainly.

"I should go. I've already put you out long enough."

Sam closed his laptop, but he didn't rise.

“If I didn't want you in my house, I’d’ve kicked you to the curb as soon as you showed up. You're not as badass as you think you are."

Bucky shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged uncomfortably. On any other day, he might have sniped back, gotten into a familiar meaningless argument with Sam. But he felt turned upside down and inside out, and he didn't know what to say.

"Well, anyway..." He shrugged again. "Thanks for, you know." He was already backing away.

Now, Sam did stand, looking at Bucky with open concern now.

"Listen, you said you were gonna get a job," he said.

It was enough to make Bucky stop fleeing. He scowled at Sam.

"Seriously? You're still on that?"

"Yes, seriously. Look, most job applications ask for a permanent address. You're gonna have a hard time finding a job without one."

Bucky stared at him.

"Yeah, it's a shitty world out there," he said. "What does that have to do with anything? I'll just mow lawns or something."

"Or you could use this as your permanent address."

"Excuse me?" Utterly baffled now, Bucky let his arms drop to his sides. “You’ve spent half your life working for the government, and you’re suggesting I should commit fraud?"

"It wouldn't be fraud if you were actually living here."

"Okay, now I know you're messing with me."

"Just think about it." Sam took a few steps closer to Bucky. "I'm not an idiot, Bucky. I know you still spend most nights on the streets. I don't know if it's because you don't want to take a bed in a shelter away from someone else, or because it freaks you out to be around so many people, or what, but none of that is the case here. I've got my guest room, and it's almost always empty. You might as well use it, until you can save up enough to afford a place of your own."

Bucky studied Sam in silence for a moment, trying to judge his sincerity.

"I don't need to be a charity case," Bucky said at last.

"Which is why you can bet your ass you'll be paying rent as soon as you get that job. Consider it a loan. Only, instead of paying interest, you can do the laundry and take out the trash."

As he met Sam's gaze, Bucky was suddenly, forcefully reminded of a conversation from a lifetime ago. He'd been on the other side of things then, trying to convince Steve to come stay with him after his mother's funeral.

He swallowed hard, his throat aching.

There were a thousand reasons to say no. Bucky was still a fugitive, a mass murderer, and Sam didn't deserve to be dragged into that mess. And despite what Sam said, he had to be doing this out of a sense of guilt, because he felt bad for Bucky. There was no chance he actually wanted him around full time.

But Bucky had been on his own for so goddamn long. Sam was the first friend he'd had in seventy years, and the sanctuary he was offering...Well, Bucky could only be so selfless.

"I'll be bringing a lot of crap with me," he warned.

"You think I don't know that?" Sam snorted. "Stop trying to talk me out of this."

So Bucky did.

*****

Bucky tried to go to sleep that night. Really, he did. Sam had made up one of the twin beds in the guest room for him, with fresh sheets a nicer pillow than anything available in the forties. The mattress was too soft, but Bucky had fallen asleep under more difficult conditions.

The day had been so exhausting that he even managed to drift off without too much trouble. But he couldn't have been asleep for more than an hour before dreams of a desperate cry, a gloved hand reaching for him, a familiar face contorted in terror ripped him from his uneasy sleep.

Sheets rustled as Bucky sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He closed his eyes and dropped his head into his hands, struggling to keep his breaths even and steady, the way Sam had taught his groups. But he couldn't shut out the memory.

Brainwashing aside, Bucky didn't think he could ever forget the look on Steve's face, the last time he'd seen it. The absolute horror and agony that had twisted those features as he watched his best friend fall. That face had been haunting him since he woke up in this world he barely recognized. Before today, he'd thought it was something he would just have to live with, that being his last sight of Steve.

Now? Well, now Bucky had the chance to replace that memory.

*****

What tracking skills Bucky had before his fall from the train had been honed and enhanced a hundredfold during his time with Hydra. After all, an assassin who couldn’t find his targets wasn’t of much use to anybody. Part of him rebelled at the thought of using those skills on Steve, but the alternative was worse.

Someone, probably in SHIELD or the Avengers, had taken measures to protect Steve's identity and whereabouts. Still, after less than an hour on Sam’s borrowed - it totally still counted as borrowing If he put it back before Sam noticed it was gone - laptop, Bucky had an address. He didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or run screaming when he realized that Steve was right here in DC. They’d been in the same goddamn city for months.

*****

The sun was not yet up by the time Bucky found himself staring down at a nondescript apartment building from his vantage point on the roof across the street.

His position would have been a perfect place for a sniper's nest, he couldn't help noticing. It faced north, so the sun would never be in his eyes, and it was high up enough that no one in the surrounding buildings would be able to get a good look at him from their windows.

Even as part of his mind was noting these factors, thinking through the tactics of a kill, the rest of him felt sick. He almost bolted from the roof right then, but now that he was here, his dread was overpowered by a deeper need. So he focused on the building and began counting windows, until he settled on the ones that belonged to the unit where Steve lived.

Although it couldn’t have even been five AM, already light was glimmering from Steve’s windows. Not too bright - those sensitive eyes didn’t need much, so Steve tended not to bother with more than a single lamp when he was alone. Of course, that was a habit that had been born of a wartime need to conserve fuel, so maybe he really did need the light and was too stubborn to-

Shaking his head, Bucky forced his mind away from the train of thought, which felt too familiar and intimate for his current position. He focused instead on a visual sweep of the rest of the building and surrounding street. 

It had been too easy to find this place, even with Bucky’s considerable skills. Beyond that, the building wasn’t defensible. Too many windows, too many possible entrances and exits, too many variables in each of the other apartments.

It wasn't Steve's fault, Bucky supposed. This all must have been new to him, when he woke up. In the first years of his fame, he'd been living exclusively on Army bases or in an endless parade of hotels on the USO trail, and then in whatever lodgings the Howlies managed to find on any given night. He’d known how to find a secure spot to camp in the forests of Germany, but he hadn't had to consider the logistics of finding a permanent home that would be safe from those who meant him harm, and even those who just loved him too much. He wasn't used to a world that turned its celebrities into public commodities.

But if anyone could protect himself from such threats, it was Steve. Of course, that probably meant the dumb punk thought he was invincible. He'd never met a problem he didn't think he could punch his way out of, even before Erskine's serum.

Before Bucky could follow those thoughts any further, the curtain in one of the windows he’d been watching so carefully was drawn aside.

Without making the conscious decision to move, Bucky rolled away from the roof's edge in an instant. He stared up at the pre-dawn sky, his chest heaving as if he'd just been locked in a battle for his life. His stomach was writhing into knots within him, and he swallowed hard, squeezing his eyes shut. Nothing since his escape from Hydra had left him this sick with fear, panic rising up in his throat to drown him.

He couldn't do this, he realized with sudden and absolute certainty. Steve was less than a hundred yards away from him, but Bucky couldn't close that distance. He couldn't walk back into Steve's life as if he was the same man who had fallen out of it all those years ago. For both of their sakes.

Losing him must have devastated Steve, Bucky knew that. But that would have been a simple kind of grief, the kind that almost everyone had to go through at some point or another. And surely by now he'd gotten through it, had time to deal with it. If Bucky rang his doorbell right now, all of that progress would go straight to hell, and Steve would be in a whole new kind of pain. Because either he would find some way to blame himself for everything that had happened, or he would think he'd been given some kind of miracle, and would have to deal with the pain of losing Bucky all over again when he realized that wasn't true. When it finally dawned on him that the face of his best friend had been stolen by a monster who couldn't give it back.

Worst of all, Steve would want to go after Hydra. For what they had done to Bucky, to Peggy’s legacy, for what they stood for and strove for. He would want to hunt them until there was nothing left. After everything Bucky had seen and endured though, he didn’t think that battle was winnable. Yet he knew that wouldn’t stop Steve from trying, and if Hydra ever got hold of him like they had Bucky…no. That couldn’t happen.

As for Bucky himself...some days, it felt like he was holding onto his sanity by his fingernails. He wasn't sure he could maintain that tenuous grip if he went to Steve now. He was having a hard enough time figuring out who he was, without someone expecting him to be who he'd been. And selfishly...he didn't think he could face Steve's inevitable disappointment. Disappointment in Bucky for breaking when Steve surely would have held out against Hydra's torturers, for letting himself be a weapon for the embodiment of evil, for killing one of Steve’s oldest friends.

Yesterday's revelations hadn't changed anything for Steve. Bucky wasn't hurting him by staying away, but he would hurt him by coming forward.

Once the decision had been made, some of Bucky’s panic receded, and his breathing eased. But there was still a tight knot in his gut, an ache in his chest. Just because he knew it was for the best didn't mean it would be easy to leave Steve behind, now that he was so close after so long.

One look. Surely he could allow himself one look, to replace the horror of his last memory of Steve. And then he would leave him alone. It was the least he owed Steve, after everything.

It took him several deep breaths to muster up the courage to creep back to the edge of the roof, to move just far enough forward to give him a clear view. His breath caught.

Steve was standing in the window now, the curtain tugged halfway aside so he could gaze out onto the street. There was a mug of coffee cradled in his large hands, and steam from it was misting a patch of the glass in front of him. He always had liked his coffee hot enough to sear away the taste buds of an ordinary man, even before he'd been given the regenerative power to deal with the consequences. 

His expression was the one he'd always worn when he had too many different thoughts going all at once, and couldn't focus on any of them. His brows were drawn ever so slightly together, as if he were puzzling over some strategy for an upcoming battle. Or maybe he was just doing what Bucky occasionally caught himself doing, and looking out over a city that felt almost as foreign as an alien planet.

That face, those features, were exactly the same as Bucky remembered. And yet he looked - different. There was something odd about seeing him like this, dressed in the clothes of another era, standing against the backdrop of a 21st century apartment.

They were time travelers, the both of them. The Bucky of 1945 would have thought that was exciting. The Bucky of 2013 wished he’d known the cost.

*****

Steve didn’t stay at the window for long, which was a bittersweet mercy. Although Bucky's intention had been to take only a quick look, he’d found it next to impossible to tear his gaze away from Steve. This was the man he’d spent almost seventy years mourning, in one way or another. The man he’d once dreamed of spending a lifetime beside.

When Steve retreated from view, the spell he’d cast over Bucky was broken. He could have stayed up on that roof, waited for another glimpse through the window, or at the front door of the building. But if he did that, he wasn’t sure he could ever make himself leave. He’d already done what he needed to, allowed himself more comfort than he deserved.

Now, it was time to keep a promise to Sam. It was time to do better.

*****

Bucky didn't even know where to begin looking for a job. He didn't have too many skills that were relevant to the modern world. Before he'd joined the Army, he'd had a job at a canning factory, but most of that stuff was probably automated now. And he was good at killing people, but that wasn't exactly something he wanted to jump back into. Sam offered to try to find him something at the VA, but Bucky had balked at the idea. He hadn't sorted out the mess in his own head yet, and he was in no position to try to help other people do the same. Besides, he knew government workers had to go through all kinds of background checks he had no chance of clearing.

But then one of the veterans at Sam's group session told him that the animal rescue she'd founded in honor of the husband she'd lost in action was looking for extra help. She'd been attending the group for even longer than Bucky had, and she knew him well enough to not even bother with an interview process. Once she'd confirmed that he had no allergies and would be available to work weekends, she hired him on the spot.

Working at the shelter turned out to be a better experience than Bucky could ever have anticipated. Challenging as he sometimes found it to relate to humans, he had no such issues with the animals. Their needs were simple; food, care, and attention. He could provide them with all of those things, and it was enough for them. They didn't care what he'd been, didn't care that one of the hands he used to pet them was made of metal. And no dog or cat had ever been placed on Hydra's kill list, so Bucky wasn't haunted by any memories of doing terrible things to creatures like these.

Looking after the rescued animals brought him a sense of peace he hadn't thought to find again. It was something he didn't want to lose.

He was still getting used to that. For decades, he'd had nothing to call his own, not even his mind, his will. Now, he had a friend, a home, a job he was starting to realize he loved. Each one something that could be taken from him. Each one something he would fight to protect.

It was frightening, in a lot of ways. Terrifying, even. But having experienced the alternative, Bucky knew which he preferred.

*****

Sam hadn't lived with anyone else since leaving the military. It had been a difficult adjustment at times, going from sleeping in barracks with a dozen other guys to having a whole house to himself. He'd come to value having his own space, but now that there was someone else living with him again, he was starting to realize how lonely it had been.

It wasn't as if Bucky was the liveliest of company. He was a quiet guy, often to be found curled up somewhere reading, or sprawled out napping on the couch, which he seemed to prefer over the bed in the guest room. Half the time, he wasn't even in the house when Sam got home. But his presence was always there, a constant reminder that Sam wouldn't be alone for long.

And when he was around, he could often be relied upon for entertainment, whether it was intentional or not. Watching him poking at the satellite radio Sam's father had bought him for his last birthday became one of his favorite pastimes. Bucky would surf through the channels, pausing on each one to listen briefly before moving on. Sometimes, his expression would light up with interest and his head would start to bob with the rhythm of the song. Other times, he would stare at the speaker with such baffled alarm that Sam couldn't help but burst out laughing.

"Someone thought this was music?" Bucky demanded once.

"It was the sixties, man. They got away with a lot of weird shit."

And the longer Bucky stayed, the more Sam felt like he was getting to know the real him, the person he'd been before his time in the military. Or maybe just the person he was happy being now, as far as was possible. He was someone who was quicker to smile, who had a dry sense of humor and a sharp attitude and a battered but kind heart.

He was someone Sam liked a hell of a lot, more than he'd ever admit to. Maybe more than he wanted to admit to himself.

*****

Target acquired. 

_The asset stalked over the rooftops, gaze never leaving the figure on the street below. He was silent as a ghost, giving no hint of his presence to his target._

_The target climbed onto a motorcycle and started the engine. No helmet; foolish, but it wouldn’t have saved his life tonight regardless._

_Polished metal glinted in the moonlight as the asset raised his gun, sighting carefully._

_The shot made little sound, suppressed by the long silencer screwed onto the barrel of the gun. Its effect was far from silent though. Below, the target went down as his front tire exploded in a burst of rubber and compressed air. He spilled onto the street, his cry of surprise and pain echoing through the night._

_Dropping without a sound down levels of fire escapes, the asset was on the street within seconds. He stalked forward, single-minded and emotionless._

_The target was still very much alive, struggling to cast aside the wreckage of his bike. Shiny spots on the asphalt showed where his blood had begun to pool. Too much blood, but not enough to kill him. Not yet._

_"Help me," the target gasped when he spotted the asset approaching. He thought he was looking at a rescuer._

_The asset scanned his face, confirming his identity. A formality. He never mistook his targets._

Rogers, Steven G. Visual confirmation.

_"Bucky?" The target stared up at him, eyes going wide._

Bucky. _That was his name, or it had been once._

_With the name came the memories. With the memories, pain._

_God, what had he done?_

_"Steve?" His mouth formed the name, but no sound came out. “Oh God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Steve. Please be okay."_

_He knelt, shards of ice twisting through his insides as he surveyed the man who had been at the center of his universe for so very long. Steve was hurt, his right leg crushed and mangled by the bike that had fallen atop it, pinning him in place. Blood bubbled from his lips, matted his hair, but he was still beautiful. He was staring up at Bucky like he was some kind of miracle, rather than the most frightening of monsters._

_"It's you." Steve's expression was unspeakably tender as he reached up with unsteady hands to touch Bucky's face. "I knew you'd come back."_

_Bucky felt the cold smears of blood Steve's fingers were leaving on his cheek, and he shuddered, horror ripping through him._

_Heart aching in his chest, he reached out to Steve in return, desperate to help him, to fix this. But instead of going to Steve's aid, to staunch the flow of blood or lift the wrecked bike off him, Bucky's hands wrapped themselves around Steve's throat._

_His target's throat._

_Strangulation. Less messy than a bullet. Less evidence left behind. Easy, with superhuman strength and a bionic arm._

_"No," Bucky whimpered, even as his metal fingers tightened around Steve's throat of their own accord. "God, no, no. Please."_

_He struggled, trying to yank himself away, but his body was not his own, not under his control. He was a prisoner in his own skin, helpless to do anything but watch in horror._

_But he wasn't just watching. He could feel it too, could feel the frantic hammering of Steve's pulse beneath his fingers, the strain of bunching muscles as he struggled for air._

_Eyes widening in shock, Steve dropped his hands from Bucky's face, down to the arms pinning him in place. But they just rested there, not trying to pull them away, even as his face began to purple, his lips going blue. His skin seemed to be burning into Bucky's, but he still couldn't let go, couldn't rip his hands away._

_"Fight back!" Bucky screamed at him, blinking blurry eyes. "Fight me, Steve!"_

_Steve was the strong one, would be able to save himself when Bucky was useless to control his own murderous actions._

_But he wasn't fighting. He was just staring up at Bucky, a small smile on his lips even as blood vessels began to burst in his eyes, spreading a pink haze through the once-pristine white. He began to make awful, gurgling noises, but still he didn't fight, didn't use any of that miraculous strength to save himself. To stop Bucky from killing him._

_"Don't let me do this." Bucky was pleading now, and he could feel the wetness of tears joining the blood on his cheeks as he felt the vitality draining steadily from Steve._

You are the fist of Hydra, _a cold voice whispered from a dark corner of his memory._ You are a weapon, Sergeant Barnes. You will only ever be a weapon.

_How stupid he'd been, to think he could ever escape._

_Steve's body was beginning to spasm beneath him now, robbed of the oxygen it needed. His grip on Bucky's forearms slackened, fell away. The fluttering of his pulse tripped once, twice; stopped._

_"No! NO!"_

 

Something struck Bucky in the side of the head, knocking him away from Steve and the scene in that darkened street. He rolled to his feet, fists flailing out toward his unseen attacker.

It was only after he'd struck that he realized he was awake, that he hadn't been before.

_It wasn't real._

Heart skipping, cheeks still wet with very real tears, his eyes darted around the guest room, looking for what had woken him.

"Hey, take it easy. You're safe."

The familiar voice was coming from his right, and Bucky's head snapped to the side to find Sam watching him from just inside the doorway, a concerned frown on his face. Bucky went cold at the sight of him.

"Did I hurt you?" he asked, remembering all too vividly what had happened the last time someone had tried to wake him from a nightmare.

"From all the way over there? You sure seem to think a lot of yourself." Sam took a step further into the room. "I was throwing pillows at you."

Looking around, Bucky could see the evidence of that scattered around him. The one that must have hit him in the face was lying next to the bed. He took in the scene without really registering any of it, still caught up in the pain and terror he'd left behind in his head.

"Sounded like a rough one.”

"What?" Bucky looked up to find Sam still watching him.

"The nightmare."

"Oh." Bucky dropped back down onto his bed and scrubbed his hands over his face, wincing as he felt the cold touch of metal against his skin. He'd gotten used to the artificial arm a long time ago, but sometimes it was a more jarring reminder of his past than he was really prepared to face. "Yeah, it...wasn't great."

Sam snorted, clearly recognizing that as the understatement it was. He strode forward and settled onto the other twin bed in the guest room.

"I used to get them all the time, when I first got back stateside,” he said. "I still do every once in a while, but they're not nearly as bad. Yours'll get better too, eventually.”

Bucky trusted Sam, but he wasn't sure he believed him just then. Not when the memory of the nightmare was so vivid in his head, the details sharp enough to cut. His fingers flexed as he remembered the feeling of crushing Steve's windpipe, the gurgling of his final breaths-

He stood in an abrupt motion, and Sam watched him with dark eyes that were impossible to read in the low light.

"You wanna tell me about it?"

Swallowing, Bucky shook his head in two sharp jerks. He was still breathing hard, muscles taut with tension. If Sam pressed him, there was a decent chance he would snap and end up vaulting out the window.

"You ever watch any cooking shows?"

It took a moment for the question to filter through Bucky's adrenaline-swamped mind. When it did, he still didn't understand it.

"Cooking shows?" he repeated.

Sam smiled, one of those warm, genuine ones that usually made Bucky want to smile back. He stood, and reached out a hand to Bucky.

After a moment’s hesitation, Bucky took it.

*****

Sam slept with his bedroom door cracked open, after that first nightmare. It had taken him too long to hear Bucky the first time. He could tell by the shadows in Bucky’s eyes, the tremors in his human hand, the way sleep had eluded him for the rest of the night, and the one after that. Sam didn’t want to see any of those things ever again.

So they managed to settle into a routine of sorts, without either of them really talking about it. Once every week or so, Sam would be roused by the sounds of distress, would head to the living room or guest room, wherever Bucky had managed to fall asleep. He began experimenting with ways to wake Bucky from a distance. Tossed pillows were a reliable classic, but Sam also had success with the Nerf bow and arrows he’d borrowed from his niece, and with the small Bluetooth speaker he’d connected to his phone.

He did regret the night he blasted _Friday_ through the speaker though. It got Bucky up without issue, but picking the most annoying song he could think of backfired in a big way when Bucky took to belting it out at all hours of the day.

Regardless of method, once Bucky was awake the two of them would end up in the living room. When Bucky had been sleeping there, Sam would shove him over on the couch and pull up the streaming queue he'd assembled, comprised of baking shows and _Parks and Rec_ and a couple of the Animal Planet shows Sam thought were stupid but Bucky seemed to love.

They would sit there together, sometimes talking but usually not, until they both managed to fall asleep again. Sam’s neck and back hated him for it, but he’d wake up aching every morning for the rest of his life if it meant the shadows kept retreating from Bucky’s eyes.


End file.
